Company Status

This debate is pointless. Yes, there would not have been a game in a first place without kickstarter backers, or without those who supported the project since the first day.

Nonetheless, she's totally right. Some worrying signs suggests that we have fewer and fewer players and that some of those who have invested a lot are gone. And now, we have a smaller team to developp the game further and fix the bugs.

As long as this game doesn't seduce a larger public, one can bring the dedication of our community to the skies, but it will not give the game what it needs to live.

I do not care if the things I paid for are less valuable. It will always be better than seeing everything disappear.

 

Yeah never said there couldn't be a version of the game where the current people can stay... But having a reboot would offer new chances for the game. Wouldn't be the first reboot of a game. Bless Online might not be a good example, but other games also went bankrupt and got taken over, reworked and re released and where at least commercially succesful.

 

FFXIV is a good example of a reboot. They knew there the first version was messed up and rebooted and now is one of the top mmo's out there

 

Firstly I wholeheartedly agree with sentiments expressed by the majority of forum folks, in that it's never nice to see people lose their jobs whatever circumstances and I hope all can find gainful employment soon and thank them for their efforts to date.

I personally do think there is the perception by a great number of players that many key (large sums of money) backers have had way too much influence in certain areas of the development cycle in Ep. 1 and quite rightly so with examples such as some folks being banned or moderated where as others have got away with similar seeming to just get a slap on the wrist. LB awards seemed to be dished out willy nilly to large backers at the start and sheesh some of those folks have caused their own dramas within game guilds and communities which has caused Portalarium issues though that's a whole different kind of thread, which if written will most likely be censored as so many other subjects have in the past on the forums.

Portalarium took a very brave and fairly unique step in allowing us kickstarters ongoing input into their development process and whilst having their own firm ideas, throughout each cycle have included a great many community driven suggestions during the jour.. (hate that word, bloody millenniums) dev process. Managing both the complex development of a game and us the kickstarters brigade, each with their own idea on what they want and what doesn't work (me included) which must be a total nightmare and resource drain to juggle at the same time. Would they do the same again if the slate was wiped clean, knowing what they know now? I doubt it.

I do find it mildly amusing and tbh blinkered that some folks feel they 'need' to know who's been let go, have instant access to what the plan is going forward; I run my own business and have done for many years and I can tell you until the directors have agreed a plan for short / medium term, legal stuff's sorted for both ex employees & suppliers etc. and shareholders both non and seed based (potentially only, as it may slip out with the latter, so business decision might be not be shared with them without an NDA being pre-signed) then usual practise would be that they aren't going to be foolish enough to share anything concrete with the community anytime soon and quite rightly too. Therefore don't get upset you're 'in the dark' as I wouldn't expect lots of answers to difficult community driven questions, or be aware that at best, it'll be vague outlines during the next live stream.

I think the way forward is to look at this with a fresh slate, no one's monetary input to date is more important than a brand new trial account player going forward; development is based around fixing key content combat mechanics or quests that haven't worked as intended, PvP has some meaningful challenge added to it as if this is the spiritual successor to UO then that's a key element to re-introduce if you are going to rekindle interest from that player base and the youngsters coming through, maybe DAoC format so those who don't wish to participate don't have to but then also a balance between casual players and hardcore grinders doesn't put folks joining in both PvE or PvP encounters.

@Hornpipe hit the nail on the head and I agree 100% even as a substantial kickstart backer so please before you flame me re-read her quote below and just think on it, we as a community need to support the remaining guys n gals achieve their vision.

 

The difference is that that FFXIV had Millions and Millions of dollars from Square Enix to back them up. Which Lets face it. Portalarium doesn't have.

 

Very sad news although the writing was on the wall for a few years. Many of us are huge supporters of this game with our time, money, and effort. We are very thankful for all the hard work and dedication of each of the Development team.

 

I've never read something just so wrong before.

 

Really?

to paraphrase @Gregg247 points raised:
Game is struggling - yup they've cut back team size and not because there isn't enough to do but as stated to balance the books
1996 - much smaller i.e virtually no competition for comparably games in the marketplace, it was new and fresh concept
Clunky UI and controls - definitely different, can easily see why folks think it's clunky compared to current crop of games in marketplace
Low player numbers - a topic considered in multiple threads on forums on how to help reverse this trend
Private mode to farm materials - yup 95% of the player base do this daily
PoT's - yup barren, in many cases and selling is a nightmare without plum position near the front or in key cities (see thread on runebooks for clarification from earlier this week)
Vendor sales - very poor and I sell artifacts etc. in Owls head on guild vendor nr top bank, so yep out the way as you don't zone in there
Marketing campaign hasn't started yet - game close to third month live, not seen any adverts on game sites I frequent, that different for anyone else?
50,000 players needed to break even - Starr's own words

Pretty spot on if you're being realistic

 

I agree with most of what you said here, but I just wanted to let people know that, since I play TESO again for nearly a month now, I miss SotA controls, because they used to feel less clunky than those I have in Tamriel now. SotA has a lot of qualities. But the problem is that some of its flaws are big enough to make people flee far away.
Taxes, Grind, Private mode, Bugged quests and dialogues, No visibl consequences, Not classless but only one class with multiple options, Sky and water graphics are some of the ones I could list here... Other people would probably add death decay and some other things. Anyway, this is not the place to discuss this. Sorry. Let's go on with the initial discussion.

 

Another sleepless night. This is misery.

 

Yes, and we hit that a long time ago. per the Crowdfunded Campaign Statistics page, archived back in March:

This isn't a subscription game. Buy-once, play-forever, means you can only guarantee that initial investment. There is enticement to buy more, either by raising your base pledge through a bundle or add-on items, but thats always a subset of players. What we don't know is how many *new* players they need each month to keep up development, or what percentage of base pledges get add-ons that help with that. So everything is speculation.

Really, there isn't a need for that. I've yet to see any of the folks who were let go start ranting about how its the doom of the game; they are very optimistic and, if anything, wish they could continue on to help polish the game for us. That dedication and passion makes me hopeful.

 

Just stepping in on this (which I don't tend to do these days), my interpretation is that would likely need to be the relative active playerbase to fund the business going forward based on average spend per month on the addon store etc.

 

I for one am not going to rush to any conclusion on the whole subject. At the end of the day they clearly have confidence in taking the game forward and making it more accessible to new players. I think for now this is at least a positive step forward.

The only way this game will fail even quicker is if we are to mass exodus from the game itself. (That is if it were to fail, in my opinion, it won't at least in the short term). The game has a lot going for it and yes it does have it's flaws, but so does any environment. I have seen it many times in my old MMO love Lord of the Rings Online. The amount of times they cut devs over the years is too much to count, but the game still goes, on a fraction of what they earned in it's heyday. It does not matter how much money a game pulls in, like anything it is proportional.

The other thing that saddens me a little is as a community we miss a trick in doing our bit at times, to support the game by showing it off to the world. When I first started streaming shroud it was around launch, and you had the usual influx of streamers, like myself. However at the start it felt super tight knit and everyone seemed super into showing off the game. However as time went on the numbers kept dropping and for several reasons I am sure.

Yes the game was not the easiest to broadcast back in R53, and as I have been told it has come a long way from say R30 as I was told by a good friend. The game was super hard to stream back in my early days and it took some work to get going. However I fell so much in love with it, that I pushed through it and was able to keep stable with it and since R54 it has been super reliable.

I feel that as a community we can do a great deal to help get more numbers in, so that in time the company can afford to bring in more people. Let's get more streamers on board, let's keep making great videos and content on it. Let's get more of these fantastic events going like with what Arieus is doing with the Aerie fund this month! Events like this! There are a bunch of great folks out in Shroud who do their bit on a regular basis, Arieus, Elgarion, Skeggy Media, Daedwax, myself and many more like ShiftPC too!

We all want this game to succeed let's just use this potential sadness as an energy source of progression of power.

I have loved the 650+ hours spent within the game over the past 3 months and I intend to keep pushing up that number as the days, weeks, months and years go by!

Sorry that this turned into something a little deeper than just a sharing of an opinion, but Portalarium need our help and we just have to keep doing our bit and all will (hopefully) get better!

 

Which was my interpretation as well. With 50k players, the percentage of those making additional purchases would be self-sustatining. And with more than that already, unless the "active" percentage dropped significantly, that has already been met. However, we don't have any of the numbers needed to make those determinations, so unless they say something different the goals they stated have been met. Anything else is speculation and doom-and-gloom fearmongering.

 

Yes, SotA was very successful in the Crowdfunding campaign when getting backers of the game (68,606). However, these pledges were made 4-5 years ago. When discussing break-even, Starr was talking about current, active players, running around the map on a regular basis.

Marvel Heroes was a completely free-to-play game. When it was up and running, they stated that only 14% of their players ever spent any money on the game at all, but those players averaged $50/month. That money was enough to fund the entire game and keep the servers running (until they lost their Marvel license, that is). If we use these same numbers for SotA (questionable, I know, but let's give it a shot), 14% of 50,000 players is 7000 players paying $50/month, for $350k a month in revenue. That jibes with some of the Seed Invest numbers we were given last year, where they stated that Port. ran through about $300k/month in expenses.

Maybe I'm going too far afield. I don't want to turn a Good-Bye thread to our friends at Portalarium into a financial debate. Sorry if I got things side-tracked.

 

Here is the simple math based upon the information available.

We learned $250k per month is what it cost to maintain the previous expenses.
50000 (players) * $5 per month for the telethons = $250,000 per month

Solved.

 

Take the steam numbers as a proxy and maybe double it.

 

I obviously want SotA to succeed and be around a long time and in reality I don't want to get into this ... but when I see flawed logic or math it is extremely difficult to not respond. 60k backers is not 60k active, paying, players. Just as on the other side of the coin: 200 concurrent players on steamcharts does not mean there are only 200 players overall. We can only assume with 50k players he meant active players who might participate in buying something from the store. He did not mean former backers and he did not mean concurrent players either.

 

Cross-post question:

Who was the VFX artist? Does anyone know? Looks like Hutch is gone.

 

Matt Schmitz - i.e. GIX