Purpose of COTOs? (SOLVED by @spoon - thx to all just the same)

The online web store used to sell items directly for money, and also sell COTOs for money.

Then players having bought the COTOs from the web store for money can purchase game items from the crown merchants (now the in-game crown shop).

What was the purpose for creating another "currency" type called COTOs?

Why did they not simply use gold for everything? (And sell gold on the web store?)

I don't understands!

 

I am going to repeat a statement I once hear dire3ctly from LB, DS, and Atos - "soon we are going to be introducing Crowns, they will be very rare and we will watch nd control how they are obtained to maintain there value." the exact words me have eluded me however the understanding was clear. 2 weeks later they were sold in the Add on store in unlimited amounts. There "purpose" has been convoluted from that day on. Gold, Iron, Copper, . . . . all had meaning now they all mean zilch. However Gold has always been in the Loot system and had purposes. The change to Cotos is something they say has always been the plan but it was not. It is almost exactly like the store in ESO. Soo their value in currency is the decision made, gold can not be used so it is really simple

 

@Chris @DarkStarr @Lord British Can you please explain why COTOs were introduced and what their purpose is?

 

It's the in-game premium currency... Its purpose is to provide an income stream for Portalarium to maintain and continue development.

If they eliminated CotOs, and sold gold directly, they would lose control of the economy and the hyper-inflation that traditionally plagues MMOs would take over. They can control the amount of Gold that exists in the game, because it's only available in-game.

 

I think i see what you mean.

But in-game gold inflation happens as the game ages (i.e. regardless of it being purchasable or not with real money). As the player population ages (esp. in this game where skills are infinite) they become more powerful and their ability to acquire gold increases, thereby increasing the amount of gold in the world (i.e. in circulation).

Given this, the COTO player sellers can adjust their prices for COTOs accordingly to maintain the value of the items being sold in the crown shop. Acting like an inflation shield for the items which have stable COTO prices.

Likewise, if COTOs didn't exist and only gold existed, couldn't the gold prices for items being sold in the crown shop be constantly adjusted for inflation then? (and arguably, Portalarium would have better means of adjusting to inflation since they would have access to exactly how much gold existed in the game, no?)

 

Two posts by Chris on the subject that are worth reading:

Explanations on monetization thinking on SotA
Gold Crowns of the Obsidians

 

woo! just in time for my bedtime stories readings!

 

Except Portalarium controls the amount of gold in the system and they can adjust the level of gold available (up or down) as needed...

@Chris is The Fed.

 

really, how?

 

@smack wow thanks for those links, great read!

I can say that the intentions were noble, however, things didn't quite turn out as Chris predicted/expected/envisioned.

What attracted me to SoTA was this sentiment. SoTA is not fully P2W, it is just partially. And I didn't mind paying to get the partial benefits. But they have since messed that up royally. Thank you for making me lose all trust in this game @Chris

Why would you not know that the RMT market would thwart any such intentions? By definition the RMT market would only exist if it had an advantage over your store. For most people, and in general for commodities, the lowest price wins. The 'official Port store' trust factor is moot. Reputable RMT sellers are trustworthy -- how could they stay in business otherwise?

Yes, it does affect the macro economy. Where do you think Player B got his gold for purchasing the COTOs? He/she gained it through hard work killing mobs. Over time, lots of gold are created this way in the economy.

 

There is a finite amount of gold in the game... @Chris said just a few days ago that the current figure is 7.3 (I think) Billion gold... Not all of that is in the hands of the players... there is some portion of it in reserve... in the bank... When a mob drops gold, that comes out of the bank... When someone pays rent, that goes into the bank... If there needs to be less gold in the game, it's simply removed from the bank... If there needs to be more gold in the game, it is simply added to the bank.

If there needs to be more gold pulled out of the hands of the players, then taxes and prices and other drains can be increased...
If there needs to be less gold pulled from the economy then those same values can be decreased...

It's not a difficult concept.

 

Cotas are brilliant, they turn the abstract idea of supporting the game infrastructure into an in game trad able commodity. someone has to pay to keep the lights on, and the coders coding and designers designing. They give a buffer and create an interesting market that allows non - real money paying players to buy and trade them(by selling gold to people that want to buy gold) to acquire the cota only stuff. Which is mostly cosmetic or convenience based.

I just played the game from zero without putting a dollar(or spending any i had from pre buying it ages ago, I did have a chat orb so that couple bucks maybe was helpful) in the see how it was balanced for a no dollar play and it was great. Im level 70 ish with 2 gm skills, and have a house and have done most the story quests. I finally broke down used my cotas for a remote bank safe. I also had a chat orb i used the wheel and deal for gear on the way up.

P2w is when you have to pay just to play and level up reasonably. I never felt like I was endlessly grinding, not in anyway that more cotas would help.

cotas essentially allow (non paying) players to supply the gold , in game, that people that buy gold would buy from an organized gold farming group otherwise. Cotas take the profit cut form the gold middle men organizations , and puts it towards server and dev costs, allowing no subscription price, or purchase price.

why not sell gold directly? it juts gives another level of control and another knob to spin when balanceing the in game economy. All the negative reviews i read about sota being p2w are from people that dont understand the in game markets. You have to find players to sell your mats too and buy gear from. If you dont, you are not playing the game as balanced and designed and may be having a harder time than you should.

 

In a nut shell COTOs are the player driven exchange rate between in game gold and dollars.

Better than port selling gold, as selling gold is printing money, which like the real world creates inflation. When a player sells COTOs to another player for gold, gold is just moved from one player to another, no gold is materialised out of thin air.

If you sell gold directly you have no control of your gold faucets. As that one is infinite with zero player time investment. Gold, as any currency in the real world, is representation of a unit of work. In a game this should equate to in game time investment.


Regards
Spung

 

i did not know npc mobs all had bank accounts

if the reserve bank ran out of money would the mobs stop dropping gold? would the npc merchants stop buying stuff from us?

it’s a conceivable concept but it’s irrelevant because it would never happen. there’d be no point to playing if the “reserve bank” ran out of money naturally or by “fiscal policy” measures.

 

They were a "Gold sink" because players take IGG to purchase them from other players, who purchased them in to online store for cash USD (as a member I used to get 9 cotos for my $9 USD member fee). In the USA IGG is considered "cryptocurrency" and is regulated by the Federal Government as a stock. Port doesn't have the Licensing needed to sell stocks, so they sell tokens (cotos). Much like Casino chips, they only have value in that Casino (although many Casinos will take your chips, but want you to trade them in for "their" chips)...

I'm sure no one here understands shock pricing, when a company see's their stock prices going too high, they will sometime issue a "stock split", where they double your shares of stock, then deflate the price by half its current value (you end up with twice the number of shares, but they have the same value total)... What this does is raise the "ceiling" so prices can continue to rise...

I don't know what Port was thinking, but they gave us a 10x stock split and consequently the price dropped too much (now cotos are worthless for any gold sink value), I found many players "buying" cotos for 5k, 6k per coto, now the most they will give you is 114 gold per coto... Where they should be priced at $600 per coto...

 

Also, taxes were drastically slashed recently on the largest property lots.

This was done, as i see it, to increase demand for COTOs so that players could own the lots they want with lower taxes or even upgraded to no tax. (which, by the way, i noticed that COTO prices rose steadily and without any apparent reason to its current prices in a co-ordinated fashion — almost as if, on cue for the impending tax slashes — what teamwork!)

However, did this really increase the COTO purchases from the official web store?

All it did was fuel the RMT market for COTO sellers to suddenly, magically, offer COTOs by the hundreds and thousands. Apparently, a lot of players hoarded COTOs for this exact moment to unleash upon the market.

How is any of the RMT sales of benefit to Portalarium?

Hmm.............

 

You answered your own question.

 

The NPCs would continue to buy things and add that gold to the federal bank, then gold would start dropping from mobs again until it was all used up.

 

As they have said all along, RMT will happen, does happen in every game, whether they prohibit it or not. This game, no game, has the resources to effectively combat players engaging in real-world transactions to in-game goods. Based on this Portalarium early on said they Wouldn't.
Why fight an unwinnable war?

The benefit is not expending very limit resource to fight a war that cannot be won.
Further, it benefits us by allowing players to operate 'above board' by not needing to deal with unknown and unknowable anonymous third parties.

 

Which means your original answer to my query didn't amount to a satisfactory answer for me at all.

This! So far has been the most plausible answer to me.

That the real purpose of COTOs is simply because of legal reasons. Well, heck! Why don't they just come out and say so? Why all the fluff about this and that? (because none of it makes sense)

COTOs were needed because, legally, it was not permissible to sell in-game gold directly for real money.

That would have sufficed as an answer for me. Stop peeing on me and telling me it's rain was what was bothering me.