Reconsider the Vault Scheme - Changing the title is not creating a new item.

It feels like the beginning of the end to me, I support any last ditch efforts to improve the player base ASAP. I don’t pretend to know how to do that but the vibe when I log in makes me nervous for the longevity of the game.

Maybe they can hire a consultant or something, What’s Raph Koster up to these days? Wasn’t he the genius behind uo or something?

 

I hope port patches the offline so you don’t have to authenticate to their online server before playing offline.

So I can still install the game and continue to play it forever.

 

Other players are not as important in off line mode huh.


How you can pk ur self is jump off a cliff. I wonder if you toggle first do you get a skull ?

 

Place your sword at the bottom so you land on it?

 

Offline mode is the pinnacle of the fun I have been having lately. Play when I need to. Pause when I need to. Have a party of 5 when I need too. Just fun!

 

My apologies, but I have to disagree with the OP, who has long (and honorably) been involved in an exclusives trading role.

Portalarium said they will not resell exclusive pledge items. I think they are showing that they are defending a certain level of 'rares' for pledge backers, within reason.

But limiting the repackaging of other items sold for a few bucks in the store otherwise, outside of pledges? Come on. That seems like nickel and diming. It is just not realistic to expect that the cost required for art talent / resources for smaller stuff would go to making one-time-only assets. 'Repackaging' is to be expected.

The way of the retail world is that 'exclusive' products are sold, then discounted, the retired, then brought back and resold again. All. The. Time. Its not realistic to expect the digital retail world to be any different. If we feel screwed, its because we bought at the wrong time in the retail cycle. But it is the cycle. And SOTA is no different.

 

Repackaging is fine.

Repackaging is fine, like the cornucopias:
http://sotawiki.net/sota/Cornucopia
http://sotawiki.net/sota/Ornate_Cornucopia
http://sotawiki.net/sota/2015_Cornucopia
http://sotawiki.net/sota/2016_Cornucopia
http://sotawiki.net/sota/2017_Cornucopia
That is a great way of creating a collectible while still making the asset/functionality available year after year.

These complaints are not about repackaging.

It is about selling the exact same asset without repackaging.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f.../release-65-instructions-feedback-post.154160

How I wish that was true.
That is what I was hoping for with this:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...before-when-launching-the-vault-25apr.153848/
We could easily have trawled through the assets which were promised to be collectibles then the rest could have been potentials for the Vault.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ng-the-vault-25apr.153848/page-2#post-1226364
There are heaps and heaps of stuff that was never promised to be collectibles that would have been fine to return.
But the way it is stated is that everything except for some of the pledge items may return with no repackaging, regardless of earlier promises.

That will cause drama.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about this - but I've never been one to "collect for collecting's sake"
Pledge stuff remains exclusive - as it should, there were promises and whatnot.

For other stuff - To me it seems a great opportunity to let people have stuff, stuff that time/effort went into making, These arbitrary expiriations were a bad idea to begin with for reasons that have been iterated elsewhere. It can be frustrating joining the game and having half the stuff you -see- not be available to obtain or buy in -any way- except to pay reseller prices.

Honestly, I think that's what this boils down to. Resellers are making a fortune buying/selling/trading this stuff - far more than Portalarium got from it to begin with. That's just economics for you though - and likely, that very ability to resell gives the items a value that causes people to buy them in the first place as an "investment" to later sell off. Portalarium has decided to allow this, honestly, the way our permissions are set up in the game its not like they could have made pledge deco items no-trade or somehow policed/prevented this from happening. The ship sailed long ago, anyway.

The key is exclusivity.
To people who bought a premium item that was expiring banking on its rarity to up its value, as an investment to later sell, have every right to be upset by this change. As when expert stations and CF vendors were added to the shop at a fraction of what players were charging, it is going to de-value their assets significantly.

For me the bottom line is -
No matter what you do, if you bring these items back in any way you are going to upset a lot of people, particularly early backers/likely people who spent a lot of $$ to get the stuff in the first place. I'm sure Portalarium are not ignorant of that fact and have considered it before deciding to proceed with this vault scheme.

On the other side of the coin, you have someone like me, who at Christmas time, just wants a Santa hat. It was extremely frustrating that the only such thing available was a grand tour hat that I missed from years-gone-by that was priced way beyond what was reasonable to pay for a cosmetic holiday hat, because it was rare, exclusive, and unobtainable anymore. Port's solution was to make a cosmetic variant of the hat and sell it for 5 bucks. This made me happy. Some players will buy things because its rare, for the prestige/fun/whatever of having something that others don't, or because they are investing in selling it. And this is fine. But I think most people could care less, they just want that table/chair/whatever cause it looks cool and when they're told its "rare" that's just a big disappointment.

I have to agree with Andernut on the core principle though - changing the name doesn't seem like 'enough' here.

If these "replicas" are going to be priced at a premium rate - then at the very least I'd expect some minor cosmetic differences to distinguish them from the originals. Putting a plaque on the wall of the houses somewhere discreet that says they are not originals or some sort of replica branding. I know such things would take time but if you're charging a premium for replicas then that time's being paid for.

 

Aha! And there is the problem, isn't it?

Portalarium did not advertise these items as "good investments" for us to buy so that we could resell them when their value went up, did they? No. Instead, us 'investors' made our own decision to do that. We took that risk. And now that its not panning out, we are unhappy? Who should we really be unhappy with? Ourselves. Ourselves for taking such a foolish risk of thinking digital game assets were an investment to begin with. People invested in General Electric and lost 2/3rds of their value in the past two years. And we're surprised that digital goods in a failing game are valueless? This really needs to be kept in that perspective.

 

As much as it grinds my gear, because part of this Vault stuff upsets me as well. @Beaumaris has a point here.

The real question imo is which items where labled as exclusive to never come back. I have really and absolutley zero clue.

 

Port played up the financial benefit of getting in on the ground level pretty consistently over the first few years of the project. I don't k ow if it was a hangover from Ultimate Collector or a vision of all the money flowing through UO that caused them to focus on RMT so much, but it is wrong to suggest that Port wasn't the driving force behind the early speculation.

 

On this point, I believe you are misinformed. If you're hearing it from reddit, you're being straight out lied to by people with a vendetta.

After all, according to reddit I am the number one RMT seller in the game, making a huge fortune of my ill gotten gains. I should own an island by now according to the stuff they are saying.

In reality, I've sold somewhere around 4 items for actual money since 2016. When I do trade things in the forums it is for Crowns which are used to slowly, slowly, upgrade my town and deeds.

Here's an easy litmus test to see whether reseller RMT is a big thing in Shroud: Is Markee Dragon streaming Shroud daily? If not (which he's not), then RMT isn't making resellers much/any money.

Any serious reseller probably bailed when the Commission Free Vendors market was destroyed. Anyone else reselling is just here because of loyalty and habit, or a really poor businessperson.

 

A quick look at marketplace posts show the number of sellers far exceeds the posts for buyers. I don’t think sellers are making money. The market is flooded with stuff; we need demand, not supply. We need more players to love and play the game. Reselling items believed to be rare cannibalizes the remaining backers, nothing more. It is a death spiral, meaning the economy is reaching the event horizon. Which is not good.

Make new special things. Sell powerful items which don’t work for PvP. Sell dev made goods. Or something else to encourage people to spend. But making money already spent wasted by selling items again for a lower cost just disrespects those who paid to make this game. It is economic suicide for the game if rules as subject to change. When you take money for a rare, it must be rare or return the money. Otherwise it is fraud. Which is not what Port intends. They are honorable and will do the right thing. Keeper of the Faith, I am. Proudly so.

 

Not really.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ng-the-vault-25apr.153848/page-3#post-1226539

If you sell something as expired/rare and allow RMT then the outcome is predictable.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...-the-add-on-store-be-obtainable-in-game.3557/

Where if things are predictable they are preventable.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...th-regards-to-rarity.39082/page-2#post-443423

Where if you are upfront and transparent then people won't be upset. While if you are not transparent enough then people will misunderstand and be upset. Where upset customers affects brand loyalty even among those not directly affected.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...aunching-the-vault-25apr.153848/#post-1226270
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...aunching-the-vault-25apr.153848/#post-1226279

 

don't hold your breath on that one

 

FYI the bunny outfit is on the vault in QA for 2000 crowns right now. So that does seem like a premium price to me. I have no idea how much it was back then but I doubt it was twenty bucks.

 

You can find the original listing on sotawiki the rabbit bodice assemble was $10.

 

The point is really simple, they can not designing any more new stuff, either they do not have the time or the creativity to accomplish it.

They think that "New" players are going to pay to buy pixel crack they already sold to other players, Not going to happen.

As a result they are spitting in the faces of players who used to support them and as a result that support is going away.

There is no way they are going to be able to offset the lose of backers here now, with new players. Especially when they are creating a history of infidelity.

As players are saying this appears to be the flailing and last gasps of a floundering swimmer.

They are just not listening

 

You don't know that all of that is what is going on and yes I know they are not talking on the forums like they did. And why all the hate? We have had lots of times where there was more silence than others. In spite of it all we are plugging along. Try asking Chris on his livestream? Threads like this are just a venue to get all kinds of speculations. You give a lot of good feedback and have given a lot of support to the game I know.

I don't say everything is done to my satisfaction either, but imo so many things I had given up on are now getting implemented. Some just from being on Chris' livestream. If he can fix it right then he quite often will. Now if they would just agree to make the little bags sellable on vendors with items in them and tradeable between players with items in them I would be very happy.

Now not to say that is all since I still believe we need an in game achievement system and task boards for things to do and lore scattered around scenes to give presence to a reason to visit them. Also of course every scene needs its own quests to do daily and perhaps not dailies as well. I think we need these things for the whole world and some of them tie it together and help it make some sense. And yes as you say it is little details that matter and not always big things. Always we should have details but that is what we are telling them now. They can't always remember every detail we have to tell them. Some things tell Chris and Travis who is on the stream sometimes. So I do have things too that I believe are necessity and I still wait and will wait and not with doom and gloom.

 

@majoria70 , "Ask Chris on a stream" is not an excuse for the devs to ignore the forum. Sorry, people have jobs and cannot or do not want to sit and watch a stream mid-day, hoping Chris decides to answer the question. And besides, as far as we know he has nothing to do with this issue and would not be able to provide an answer.

I will say it again - it is cool that Chris streams; it is not a remedy or justification for the devs abandoning their own forums.

And unfortunately, per the release notes Starr just posted, the Vault is going in as planned. *Sigh*