This Months Rewards are Meh

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Alleine Dragonfyre, Mar 15, 2019.

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  1. Spungwa

    Spungwa Avatar

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    I was surprised that there was not some check of age of the item before it becomes eligible to be picked for a random sale. I would have implemented that items should be 60 days old before being in the running to be on sale.

    I would also have a cool down, so once something has been on sale it is not eligible to come back on sale for 30 days.

    This can be a very slippy slope. Not sure I agree with this one, happy for more convenience. I don't actually consider the remote bank "pay to win", it just evens up the score with PoT owners who can just place a banker down when they want to access the bank.

    This i completely agree with. Live stream rewards are there as rares, no need to make others. This just makes items in the game that have to be maintained (through unity upgrades etc - grass coming through your expired house floor for example, people still expect this stuff to be fixed even though the item is expired) but will never generate any more income.


    Regards
    Spung
     
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  2. Schroedinger's cat lives

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    Greetings! How about a Jabbering Darkstar? ... or maybe a Jabbering Atos with a mwahaha voice that says "don't lawyer me bro!!! g,d r :)
     
  3. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    Brilliant :D

    and YAY Schroedinger's Cat lives!
     
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  4. eli

    eli Avatar

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    "The Emperor's New Clothes" (Danish: Kejserens nye klæder) is a short tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent – while in reality, they make no clothes at all, making everyone believe the clothes are invisible to them. When the emperor parades before his subjects in his new "clothes", no one dares to say that they do not see any suit of clothes on him for fear that they will be seen as stupid. Finally a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"

    It was a joke about how we all want to believe we are supporting game development, but the moment the cosmetics are disappointing, the support dries up with it. Perhaps it's a good opportunity to ask ourselves what we are really doing here.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2019
  5. Feeyo

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    My kids love that story :)
     
  6. Boris Mondragon

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    Thank you for that version of “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”. The Jack Herer one is not suited for children and tells the story of a man who pursues the cannabis conspiracy in the U.S. Quite an interesting and enlightening read for me. R/Boris
     
  7. kaeshiva

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    You would think the largest cost associated with an asset would be the up front time it took to develop the art, configure all the layers/surfaces/etc. to make it work in the game.

    Engineer you definitely make some good points with regards to cost to maintain items on the store, and re: the initial "grab it up" sales that would not otherwise have happened.

    However I don't think that outweighs the negatives of the loss of availability - unless the item was just so extremely unpopular that they've projected nobody's ever going to buy it, so they expire it, and maybe sell a few since its got intrinsic value for being "rare." I don't think that's the case with most things.

    They've already lost hundreds of dollars in potential shogun house revenue from people speculating on moving into my town alone and my own "would have" purchases. The shogun houses exist, they must continue to be supported in the database or whatever, it wouldn't cost them anything other than store real estate to make them available. Even if they took them off the 'main store' and had them available from local vendors only if it was a clutter thing. Making them impossible to obtain --> lost revenue, or worse, players spend a lot more than Port would have gotten buying from a reseller if they really really want it.

    There's also the cost in perception, as my previous example - new player had his heart set on an expired house, couldn't get it, ended up not buying anything and, leaving the game. I'm not saying he left the game because he couldn't have the house he wanted, but it certainly didn't help matters. Dangling a bunch of shiny pretty things in front of people and then saying YOU CANT HAVE THIS is not a way to win their hearts. Especially when there's no really strong or compelling reason to expire such things other than to "make way for new" - but guess what, new stuff isn't here! The availability of buyable houses is in a sad, sad state. It would make more sense to offer the new stuff before you get rid of the old stuff, if there's nothing desirable to buy then people are not going to buy coto to spend. This was pointed out on another thread about housing availability, where, people have no incentive to spend cotos upgrading deeds to town/city size because other than BOATS, there's only 1-2 options available for purchase. In the case of city, its "adobe city arena thing" or "big greek looking temple thing" neither of which are really suitable as personal homes that you'd live in.

    I get the expiration of pledge-era stuff, it was meant to be rare rewards for backers. I have no issue with that. I'm talking about arbitrarily expiring stuff that a lot of time/effort/work has gone into creating, that people are absolutely willing to pay for. They have been removed with no comparable replacement offered. And unless there's a WHOLE lot of house-building going on behind the scenes waiting for some sort of big unveil, which I somehow doubt, it could be months before there's more houses available and if that's the case, why expire before then?

    The expiry of individual furniture/deco items, especially "unpopular" ones - I follow your reasoning, but even in that case, it would make more sense to discount it or bundle/package it and sell it (since they are digital items, after all) rather than just remove it from circulation. All the items still are expected to function properly, be maintained/fixed - they've basically committed to an eternity of 'maintenance' cost on items that will never generate more revenue. Seems shortsighted.
     
  8. Datendrache

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    Sorry to hear that. I get the feeling, though, that if someone posts in the Marketplace they'll locate some reasonably priced, possibly even cheaper than store price, Shogun homes. Like you, I'd prefer people buy directly from Portalarium. You won't hear me debate the artistic value and pride from creating a PoT sized piece of artwork, I think its fantastic!

    When it comes to the Bundles, I don't think most players understand the reasons for the expirations. I'm going to toss my name into the hat of people that don't fully understand -- it has something to do with Episode 2, new bundles, and artistic direction.

    On an item-by-item basis, it's less clear why Portalarium expires them. While I mentioned a few reasons earlier why they might expire, there's some others that I really don't know why they expired them. Any of the bundle homes that could be purchased at the crowns store even if they were not a part of a bundle -- those I don't know why.

    Yeah, and that angst is starting to hit me as a player, too. I'm a collector, and want to share my museum, creations, etc. not as a reason to inspire jealousy, but mostly as a shrine of the history of the game. Doing this required a lot of work, sacrifice, and an appreciation for the details of the game and its developers.

    On one hand, I want to support early adopters, investors and merchants by keeping item rarity in check; but on the other hand it doesn't inspire min/max players used to ending up with their own Castles and Kingdoms at the end of the game. Not sure that any changes to the add-on store are going to change this point of view from those particular players. Paying for the items that were previously restricted to a few will irk them as much as not being able to have them at all. It is "Pay to Win" in their eyes, even if winning is the "Lord" title and the gigantic homes. Players with a more reasonable mindset will probably get what they need in the Marketplace or one of the many web stores, probably at a discount.

    I will agree with you that not selling the same item prevents gaining revenue that would otherwise support it, which makes complete sense to me. However, at some point the decision has to be made if an item is deemed "complete", and if Portalarium doesn't suspect the item will require future maintenance. Items that have been in the add-on store for extended periods generally fit this description. They don't want to track sales to a specific item to fund for maintenance.

    BTW, we're kinda far off the OP's topic. If there's more commentary on this thread line, please start a new thread.

    Sincerely,

    Engineer
     
  9. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Jabbering Atos can say “suck it tamers”. I have not forgotten @Chris ! That comment still burns at my soul.
     
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  10. Sketch_

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    This.
     
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  11. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    Depends on what you mean by meaningful. I think the old-style "UO Spiritual Successor" thing to do would be to give titles for GM'ing things. It would go a long way in people personalizing their personas more, encourage game-play and just make an otherwise dismally empty title box full of choices. I suggested that the community help with this. I'd start the thread but I'm not with enough time to write out all the GMs etc.
     
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  12. redfish

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    Yea that's part of what I mean. A GM title is an achievement title, as well as an RP title, since it matches with choices he's made in game.

    But if the dev's come up with a new reward title every month for the sake of coming up with a new title, they're going to be stretching things thin pretty soon trying to think of new titles, they'll be lame and lamer, and none of them will be really personalized either or meaningful to players.
     
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  13. Joe Zhudarak

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    R64 in general will be meh... no masterwork gm effects, no references about fertilizer. Some good moves in performace, but where are the new content ? how do you spect people maintaning interest in this game with such a small monthly release. i´m very dissapointed
     
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  14. oplek

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    It feels like they've placed all their chips on the dungeons... but a problem with dungeons is that the progress is very slow and sluggish. Even when incremental features are out, now players have to put a lot of effort to get anything going (they should have some easier craftable totems that'd do things like spawn rats or rabbits, etc).

    They should be mixing it up with some more lower-hanging fruit to compliment dungeon progress (so we're not waiting, staring into space for eight consecutive months waiting for it to be finished)... but then you see frequent references to "jira triage" in the standup notes which loosely translates into previous requests we made, that they've officially, but privately, laid on the chopping block... so those things they said "that sounds cool, we'll add a jira!" in the past livestreams were quietly let go behind closed doors.

    Meanwhile, it's dungeons and incremental 0.1fps average improvements. That's why I was genuinely surprised when they did the POT MOTD functionality. More of that, please.
     
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  15. Lifedragn

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    A bit late with the response, but I am saving up to upgrade my lot deed to tax free. I managed to get to tax free row. Tax free village is my next step. I have two accounts on the $9 sub and with that am about 2-3 months from a sudden purge of cotos.

    Also, I know a couple of people that just haven't been playing that still have a bunch from their original kickstarters - just because some element of the game (combat system being #1 cited) did not appeal to them. But they still hold onto their things rather than selling them off.
     
  16. Lifedragn

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    I get this feeling a lot, especially when people start talking about retaining exclusivity of items for private reseller value. Though I understand this has definitely driven short-term spending boosts in the audience it really betrays that the motivation for the purchasers was not to support the game.

    I have a pair of subscriptions to support the game. I haven't ever sold a reward RMT or IGG. Some months I get something really cool and other months I don't and that is alright. I cannot afford to put in a bunch of money in big bursts. I will admit that as I'm able to do more and more in game with the COTOs that I am saving them for good use. But I really want to see Episode 2. I would really like to see Episode 5, but that feels forever away at the moment so one step at a time.
     
  17. Sol Stormlin

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    So I've been kind of gone for a bit due to life responsibilities. What is up with the add-on store? There is like NOTHING to buy but cotos essentially. Is that the plan now?
     
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  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, that's the plan. It has various pluses and minuses.

    Pluses are no huge dollar items scattered all over (kind of ruined by the Lord bundles). Less overhead of maintaining in game and website stores.

    Minuses being no more buying with cash, we've got to get used to the COTO -> buy in game path. I'm still not used to that personally.
     
  19. Barugon

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    It's because all the other games do it, so now we do too.
     
  20. Doctorface

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    I personally would have liked to see them stand by the 'Darkstarr Longow' from a while back and make the bow fire with a SFX of Starr saying 'ow'. Little dumb but not off brand.
     
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