Catnip Games Discussion Thread

They may limit/discourage RMT releated to Crowns Shop items, but what I strongly advise against is trying to fight or stop the commodities/farmables RMT.
This proved to be an ineffective and wasteful practice in any MMORPG, the only game which was able to limit it is BDO and the price to pay was exaggeratedly high (no trading system) and despite this, players have turned to directly sell accounts.
Top games (like WOW, Fortnite, AO etc) with exorbitant financial and human resources failed to stop it, neither with the threats nor with the measures.

I also think that a game like SotA with an important imprint on "Players driven economy" shouldn't absolutely limit what concerns the player to player trading of resources and currency obtainable by spending playing time.

Wurm Online is a good example of a totally free players driven economy.

 

I think 99% of the people who are talking RMT are talk about players selling to other players, not the items the company sells in the Crown shop or give from a subscription. Every free to play game sells things to players to make money. Everyone here is talking about the after market of selling digital items to each other.

And some of us who didn't pay enough in the online store can't use the Announcement thread so we can only chat in this one, so please don't lock it.

 

Greetings all
I agree RMT from players to players opens the game up to scammers. The addition of more Trusted Traders (players trusted to hold assets and complete trades) would help. This transaction does not benefit SOTA other than decreasing support issues. Many other games I have played have had better success with selling cosmetic items and rewards as account bound, they sell more if every one wants it. The rest of the items are tradeable but can only be sold in the games Auction House using in-game money with a small percent going to SOTA like a commission vendor. Things would have to be figured out as far as the percent to charge, how long it could be posted, and a log-in bonus for in-game money or better drops.It could even be regional so that some items would automatically be worth more in different areas like Viking items are worth more in the Norgard Auction House. This would do away with the RMT and the Account Bound items that are not cosmetic or rewards. And although some things would have to added most of the tech is already there. Just make public town vendors bigger.

As for Chris and the team (Chris IS the team). Congratulations Chris. I see you spending so much time on the streams and wonder how this "Change" is going to affect you. More streams, more meetings, less time for family. All for our benefit. THANK YOU. Give yourself more Vacation Days and then Take them and by all means hire a communication person to speak to us players so you don't have to spend so much time saying the same things. BTW this is in addition to a Customer Support person.

And thank you to all the players still here enjoying/tolerating the game and all the new players signing up. I have seen a lot of post in the New Player forum asking for help from the existing players.

 

Great ideas @Warrior B'Patrick !!

 

Nice! MOAR DETAILS pretty please ^^

Hurrrmmm.........Let's see what you come up with before i rant ^^

Make it 100% please.

No trade is never the right direction imo.

 

Chris sounds like he has a decent vision so far on that aspect.

Now if he would only see the light that the current quest, journal, pvp, etc systems need a drastic overhaul prior to implementing new screens and dungeons then I will increase my subscriptions and invite tons of friends to try out the game. But in the current state that those and many other systems are in I wouldn’t do that to my friends.

 

Fortnite? How did Fortnite fail to stop RMT of farmable ressources if every time you click "Play" EVERYTHING except your cosmetics are reset to 0?

Fortnite would usually be a game I could mention but in a "They've done it well" kind of way, and the reason is all their microtransactions are cosmetics, 100% cosmetics. The main difference between most of our cosmetics and other games's is that we actually sell the item with it, like all those ornate weapon versions, meanwhile other games will still force you to have the item for the skin to show, or the cosmetic is actually on something that has 0 impact to the game (avatar, wheels in rocket league, champion in league, etc.)

While I agree with many, and especially CICI with her dollar store deco Idea, I would rather EVERYTHING become a pattern, not a pattern PACK but just 1 singular pattern, so you need to have the item in game and then can place your pattern on the actual item. You want an ornate flower pot? Bring a flower POT and buy the pattern. You want a Kobold 2 story row house? Craft a 2 story row house and purchase the (pricier) pattern to apply it on it. This way, no one is getting actual items, they are getting visuals/cosmetics for items they already own and got through the game, and this way, if someone resells something, they have to 1. Give up the item, and 2. Give up their purchased pattern.

They reason I prefer this way is that all successful games I've played where microtransactions were not something that any new comer complained about are those games like CS:GO, Fortnite, Rocketleague, League of Legends, where microtransactions are 100% cosmetics. I'd far rather spend to look good on a game that only offers that than to spend to acquire stuff on a game that allows that, because at some point everything is too pricey, and I feel like to actually compete with others in looks I need way more disposable income than I can afford, so my contribution becomes close to 0.

 

I was referring to Fortnite: Save the World of course and not Battle Royale, my fault that I didn't specify although it seemed obvious to me.

This is how the mentioned titles failed to it, and with them hundreds of other MMO games, but especially MMORPGS since trading between players is usually one of the key points of Massively multiplayer online role-playing games

https://www.fortniteitems.gg/
https://www.igvault.it/WOW-Gold
https://www.mmoah.com/albion-online-silver

Fortnite isn't even a MMORPG and it is far away from the MMORPG rules and think that also there people found ways to sell their stuff.
Comparing Esport titles market (CS:GO, Fortnite: Battle Royale, Rocketleague, League of Legends) where there is nothing to trade/sell/buy/farm to the MMORPG market doesn't even make sense, but also there people sell their accounts, every day, hour, minute.

As i said before there is no other MMORPG except BDO who stopped RMT, even they couldn't, people sell directly accounts there.

WoW is the case in point of how the biggest MMORPG in the world failed after more than a decade to stop the RMT of commodities/farmables resources and igg.

PS: I have no intention of arguing more about this topic, it just wanted to be an opinion from someone who have been studying and analyzing the MMORPGS gaming market for years even for professional reasons.

 

Cash transactions between players will always happen, whether you embrace it or not, whether you police it or not.
SotA was built on a foundation of "everything's for sale" which means while some people will farm gold in game, others will buy gold with cash to buy things in game, or some will skip the middle man and simply buy items or services for cash. I think the overall impact of this in terms of appeal to a larger playerbase is a negative one, for the same reasons that the cash shop on the website was culled, and agree with the overall decision to try and reduce this impact. I think Sota's stance on allowing, but not taking responsibility for, player to player exchanges is somewhat refreshing, but perhaps does not belong on the official game forums because it incorrectly implies that these transactions are in someway trustworthy and/or safe when that may not be the case.

So - the new direction. Not against it. If I buy stuff, I'd rather the devs get the money than some reseller, and I buy stuff to use it/enjoy it not sell it on. Its a GAME, to play and enjoy, and people treating it like a job/investment opportunity has created poor PR and other negative connotations (P2W, etc.)

The problem we have is precedent. Everything used to be tradeable, simply making it not tradeable is diminishing it. There are also the technical limitations with no trade items being placed on shared properties etc. making a bit of a mess and frustration.

I'm a strong advocate of selling 'unlockables' rather than 'things' - we see this with some emote purchases that are applied directly rather than being delivered in a bag, or with the pet dances unlock, character slot unlock, etc. Account-based unlocks by definition cannot be resold and would I think help reduce the negativity around "ugh, I can't trade this item."

I would suggest:

Instead of selling a furniture set, sell a recipe pack to craft a furniture set.
People will buy it for completionism and personal use, and the additional benefit of being able to craft those items (with in-game materials) and sell them for gold to players who can't/wont buy the recipe unlocks themselves. This incentivizes the purchase from the shop as its a permanent unlock for your character as well as a marketing opportunity / stimulates trade. As the resulting items are nonfunctional cosmetics it isn't pay to win - its pay to have pretty things, which is the same thing we have now.

Instead of selling individual, tradeable deco pieces, sell ACCESS to niche merchants who sell the items for gold at a reasonably low cost- the items themselves can be marked up/traded creating a gold sink / economic activity. Not everyone will buy them - some people will try to buy the stuff for gold from players, which is fine.
Example: for like $20 you can personally unlock say, an art merchant, that sells all the paintings for gold. While you could buy these paintings and list them on vendors for players who can't/wont spend cash, you cant "trade" your access to the merchant, that stays on your account. When you quit the game, it doesn't get resold. People who want the convenience/lower price of having direct access to this deco, buy the access. This sort of thing would add much needed cash sinks as well.

Sell a pack of heraldry 'stamps' that can be put on any applicable item rather than specific packs. The stamps themselves can be account bound /no trade as they are linked to your heraldry anyway and you still have to get the character of that account to apply the heraldry under the current system - so no additional inconvenience.

Deployable, functional items (think gustballs) (and lots of potential for other 'deployables') don't have to be a physical, tradeable item. It can be an account unlock that treats these items instead as skills that can be put on your bar and used. Some games allow you to deploy a temporary npc merchant or banker that your party members can use, or things like campfires that give some sort of bonus if you're standing in it, etc.

You could also sell an account unlock that lifts the batch cap on tedious tasks. For a one off payment, your account unlocks the ability to batch 100 items at a time instead of 20 (or 140 instead of 60 for refining since that gets a bonus from a skill as well).

You could also sell an additional 'build' slot - (NOT an additional specialization), but just a clickable reconfigure of your character to a different build without the tedious training/untraining. Many many games do this. Its an account bound unlock that lets you swap from Build A (two specs) to build B (two different specs). Make it require talking to the oracle to change, give it an hour lockout cooldown, and hell, even add a small gold cost for it like 5k so its not willynilly doing it in combat.

Account based unlocks of this type are another form of character achievement, progression, and completionism and either encourage direct spend or purchase of COTO from other players in order to achieve goals rather than just accumulate stuff.

There's so much potential with account unlocks beyond selling deco and clothes which by nature, want to be tradeable and can be frustrating if not.

 

Well I really hope the Single-Player aspect remains in future episodes, I haven't started the questline yet, I've been waiting ever so patiently for the Quest and Journal overhaul!

Best of luck to you Atos and to the rest of the team.

 

I did not even consider the other part of Fortnite, you are right, although that is not what is popular about the Fortnite name

And I agree with you, fully, making RMT against the rules in a game is not an idea that works, it will never stop, but pushing it away from the official ressources stops customers from complaining to CatNips CS team if something goes wrong.

There are two sides to the medal, where one side is do you want ressources from the team to be working on disagreements and scams from RMT or do you want them to work on real issues? Meanwhile many of you here want an official location to do this to reduce said scams, but I think it doesn't work, heck even I almost fell to a scammer in game, only to be warned by Mac that the guy was not selling a T15 pet but actually a T13, even if the names were wrong, and this scammer really got upset when I did not fall for his lies. Those kinds of people should have a black shroud/aura on them permanently so they cant lie to themselves but hey

BTW I did not want to "argue" with you, it was an honest point where I was wondering how Fortnite Battle Royale was an example of failed ressources RMT blocking lol!

 

Kind of hard to make a lot of changes regarding RMT aspects without being a bit "bait and switch" to early adopters, when the ability to recoup some of that investment would have figured prominently in the decision and extent to which they supported the game.

 

This was a legitimate example of why Port needed to ban people who knowingly use bugs or exploits. The person was never banned, but it's another example how bad actors can pop up in the game. Port should have made an example of that person and players would have felt more comfortable with trading in game.

 

What is most interesting to me is how a switch to a F2P friendly (as mentioned, ALL store items are dollar store transactions of $1-$5, not the tens, hundreds, thousands of dollars we have now) model. It is a chicken and the egg situation.

Devs think the game is largely being held back by the prices in the store; I think it is held back by unfinished, unpolished and unfun gameplay. If you lower the prices, make items no trade, etc., how long can Catnip Games afford to do that to try to bring in new players with the low prices, and will they actually stay long enough to get the volume purchases needed to sustain a real micro-transaction model?

Because the only way to test if high item prices are holding back new player retention is to lower prices across the board and see what happens. Big risk in my opinion, and again, without core game play improvements, an even bigger risk. I wish you luck in trying this out though, it is a noble effort.

 

You can either have 10000 people buying a $10 item or you can have 1000 people buying a $100 item. SOTA has a LOT, LOOOOOT, LOOOOOOOT, LOOOOOOOT more possibility of selling 1000 $100 items than 10k $10 items. It's simple math and math doesn't give two shits about equality unless you're solving an equality equation.

The "1000" of us spent many thousands each to fund MOST of this game. Most of the "1000" stopped spending thousands of dollars many months/years ago with the devaluation of virtual items. If the 10k people don't pick up the slack its GAME OVER. So do your part or do you just like to complain about inequality?

 

100% agree. This will truly be a last ditch effort. I hope it works out because the alternative is worse for all involved.

 

It's funny, I was doing wacky math on this the other night.

If you take the idea that 5% of players actually make a purchase in a F2P game and there's 10K monthly players. If they have, I dunno, 5 guys at an average of 75K per annum (for argument's sake)... Then I suppose those 500 paying players would need to be spending $62.5 a month to sustain the team? Obviously that doesn't take into account subs and players who can afford to spend a lot more but it seems to me that running a small team nomadically (made a word yay!) is in the achievable range.

Obviously the more players the better so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with Chris's new player capture gambit and whether the game can eventually achieve sustainable growth.

Seems logical to try and reduce costs to give that a shot.

Edit: I didn't factor in equipment and other running costs but whatevs. You can play with those numbers all day.

 

Exactly this! Nailed it and like @Greyfox stated, this might be the last time to try and make it or break it. As long as they have a wide range of items for players to purchase at different price points, if people don't find the game fun or finished they probably won't stay.

 

I coined a phrase years ago. SOTA isn't pay to win, it's pay to meh.

You can't have both systems. Either charge a lot of money for virtual items worth the cost that hold or appreciate in value or charge little money for cosmetics that do nothing.

For cheap cosmetic items to successfully fund a game you need a lot of customers paying a little. This requires an interesting, addictive, polished game like Fortnite or an MMO like Everquest. For expensive rares you need fewer paying customers that pay a lot of money for rare items that increase in value or provide unique abilities. You sell a few of these items to "whales" and provide a method for those not with money to earn them in game. This was the proposed SOTA method or the current method in a game like Eve Online or Mech Warrior Online.

You can't have it both ways.