A plea

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Ulskanine, Nov 22, 2019.

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  1. Violet Ronso

    Violet Ronso Avatar

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    One thing about this specific point, which doesnt answer the other points you made, but I felt was still important to mention. One this that I've noticed in games is that if a player has the ability to add something, he will almost always do it far better than a dev, if he has the talent, simply because he knows what HE wants as a player, and where to push it, meanwhile, a dev needs to justify the time spent on anything he works, and time spent on a UI, without really playing much of the game (at least not to the point many of us do) will have difficulty finding a reason to work on xyz for the UI, and even more difficulty to justify it, so Im actually not surprised that Devilcult managed what he did, he knew exactly what he wanted and worked on that, without anyone over his head looking at how much time he might be wasting.
     
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  2. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    Mmm... McRib....
     
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  3. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Hell yeah! The McRib is freaking delicious, I don't care what anyone says! :D

    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    Whoa, whoa, whoa...

    I cant speak intelligently for @Lazarus Long, but I can damn sure speak for @Duke Ezekiel Cooper

    I haven't been alienated...
    I've been away for the holidays since the convention and haven't been in game or online much.
    I've read over some comments in this thread and scanned over others, but the bottom line folks, is that this game has to make it's own money to survive, no matter how it makes it, and no matter the RMT element.

    Next... A fundamental truth...
    A truth that I have known and shared with Port since "Day one."
    ANY game, that allows trade between players, WILL be plagued with RMT, spearheaded by the internet entrepreneurs... PERIOD...
    There is no getting around it and to try to fight it is an exercise in futility!
    RMT will "ALWAYS" find a way in a platform where player to player trade is allowed.

    "I've even made RMT transfers in Fable 3 on a XBOX 360!"

    So... The great debate about whether or not RMT should be allowed or not is a moot point... Both from the players stand point and from the developers stand point...
    Why? Because by it's natural design, a "real MMO" is automatically part of the internet digital market because trade between players is a necessary evil.

    Next... Port has to make it's own money in the culture above...
    Granted... They haven't exactly went about it the way that would have generated maximum profit, because they have simultaneously tried to corner the RMT market and rid themselves of that competition.
    But as I said above... That will never work and it can be experimented with for 1000 years if they want, only to prove the theory sound and correct 1000 times over...

    Next... Let me address this...
    Nobody has screwed me...
    I and the BMC have spent MANY MANY MANY thousands of dollars in the development of Shroud of the Avatar...
    Now "read" what I just wrote... The key word there is "development".
    I personally spent an astronomical amount, for one reason, and one reason alone...
    Because I wanted to establish a firm settlement in Shroud for the membership of the BMC.
    It was never about how much money I was going to make in return... It was all about establishing an online home for the organization that I love with all my heart.

    "Believe it or not. The money doesn't really make a damn to me."

    You guys have a good day,
    Zeke
     
  5. Violet Ronso

    Violet Ronso Avatar

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    If you got 5 alerts for this single comment alone, yes, I liked it 5 times, first because you answered for yourself and proved to the one using your name that he didnt know what he was talking about, but also because I love your mentality on why you've put so much money in the game.

    From my first day playing this game I kept hearing people talk about investing for return later on, even my father had that mentality (Mobidoy), and I found it a very weird thing to say, especially with how most of the games Ive played went, i.e. Warframe had made Frost Prime limited, so people who had managed to farm multiple parts for it started selling it for a very high price, so when they opened the vault to sell it again, thats when I knew this wouldnt be the last of it, and that any limited edition investing would be a risk, and Shroud did prove it again.

    I love this game, and I truly hope they figure a way to monetize it correctly, but I do think they need to think about every level of spenders for that, and the small spenders like me need a way in too, and CICI had a good idea for this, a dollarstore heritage deco shop is already a good way in. Add in single sets of pattern packs and such, and maybe I can spend more on the crown store.
     
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  6. Elrich Skychosen

    Elrich Skychosen Avatar

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  7. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Amen.

    I am done throwing good money after bad, though. I never looked for any "return" on the money I spent to assist with the development of the game. However, I do feel like I was sold a slightly disingenuous bag of goods.

    The thousands of dollars I spent on the development of Shroud, was for what we were told during the Kickstarter, was an immersive story akin to the likes of Ultima IV-VII. I think we can all agree we got nothing like that. So yeah brother, I am a little salty in that regard.

    Like you said Zeke, the game needs to stand on it's own two legs and in my opinion that can only be done by creating a game worth playing and spending money on.
     
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  8. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    I have thrown good money after good money on SotA. I don't regret supporting Portalarium with all of the fun I have had watch them create and play SotA over the past 5 years. I see elements of the single player Ultimas and Ultima Online. If they were not in here to make SotA Ultimaish, I would not be here.
     
  9. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    Appreciate the kudos...

    I logged back in this morning to see the activity on this thread, and I'm gonna throw one more curveball behind what I've already thrown and then get off the mound.

    This whole thread was started because of disgruntlement over pixel candy...

    So I'm gonna share "ANOTHER" fundamental truth...
    Some people in this game have got their sh*t wired up right & tight...
    Others have totally got their blues and reds crossed...

    Some people are actually going out and "working" to generate "tradable" commodities that they can sell for RMT...
    Others... Well... Their sitting on their asses waiting for Port to make the next piece of pixel candy that they can try to swoop in and buy because they "think" it's a limited edition...

    Who the hell do you guys think has made the most RMT?
    The working avatar or the pixel flipper?

    The final analysis is this...
    There's so much stuff that's tradable in this game, THAT PEOPLE NEED...
    That heritage items, vault items, pledge rewards, and all that pixel candy takes a DISTANT back seat...

    Grab a pickaxe or a hatchet and quit crying...
    Your wearing me out...
     
  10. Sulaene Moon

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    I absolutely love this! You're 1000% correct!
     
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  11. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    The same is true in the Shroud Community as it is in any other society.

    Some have a firm grasp of the difference between "need" and "want",
    And others do not.

    Those that understand the difference will profit,
    While those that don't will consume.

    I think Port has hit the nail squarely on the head...
     
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  12. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    For your game. Different people do different things in SOTA. For my wife, she likes to decorate. The issue with Heritage (at least for my wife and I) has nothing to do with RMT. I've iterated the problems with Heritage before, but I'll summarize again, since you may have missed them:

    From the start, one of the main draws to SOTA for my wife was the housing system/deco system. She loves to decorate our lots and spends hours doing so. But heritage items have really killed this off. The issues with it grow every time we try and do anything:

    We have 5 accounts between us, which have purchased various things and also gotten various login & subscriber rewards, most of which are heritage now. Issues we hit are:

    a) Before, it never mattered who was doing the decorating. Now, we have to switch accounts multiple times to decorate.

    b) Before, it never mattered who was storing items. Now we can't store the items in our 2 rooms dedicated to storage at our primary house. Even if any given account could store them, a different account couldn't grab them to go decorate with

    c) We can't just use a single account to clear a lot anymore, because we have to bring on the accounts that placed the heritage items to pick them back up into their inventory (No, we don't want it getting all sent to the bank, etc)

    d) We can no longer go and cruise player vendors and pick up items for igg that came from the crown store because they're heritage. This used to be how we got many of our decor items. This brought important money into the game for those people who wanted to convert RL money into igg.

    In essence, all heritage items have done is make the one last feature of the game that was "fun" for my wife and I become extremely painful. It also means that Catnip/Port is *losing* money, at least from us, because we will not invest in buying the (still ridiculously priced) heritage items as they are for us, useless.

    It would be one thing if players were limited to a single property, and the game, from the start, had made all decorations soulbound. But that isn't the game they created or sold to (initially) its backers and later to anyone else who was playing. With 16 different properties spread across 5 accounts, what was once easy is just hassle, and that's a serious problem.

    Another problem with Heritage items is that now SOTA seems to be 100% dedicated to putting any and all new decor in the crown shop. In the past, there was at least a pretense of giving players new items to be able to craft for decorations, even if some of it looks like the handiwork of a 9 year old (craftable bookshelves I'm looking at you...). Now they don't even bother with that.

    Finally, the rewards that used to come with a subscription that were not bound were the reason my wife and I had 4 subs. With the lackluster items that are now delivered (bound), we've cancelled two of those subs, and will likely cancel the other two unless something changes soon.

    So I get it. For *your* game, these things don't matter to you. But for a lot of other people, these things matter a lot. You see them as "want" vs "need" because it's not important to how you play. However, it is the *only* reason others play SOTA, and for those people the situation is quite different.

    The whole RMT argument is a sideshow and irrelevant. There are ways these things could be done as I've note (higher priced for tradeable, lower priced for heritage) that would resolve everything above for my wife and I. But that's not being done. Instead, all SOTA's getting is lost cash flow, at least from my wife and I. And if this keeps up, no one's going to have a game to play as Port drives away those who were spending the cash on the store items and subs for the deco.
     
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  13. Vladamir Begemot

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    I think you've just accidentally proven the opposite point than you were trying to make.

    Anyone buying for RMT future sales is long long gone. They sold out sometime around launch, bragged about it on reddit, and if they were of normal psyche, we never heard from them again.

    The gold farmers will always be around, and thus the adventurers will have a market until the game dies.

    But that means people pissed about Heritage must be some other type, a third and fourth, perhaps. What could it be? Who are these people? Who might they be if villian of the cash shop RMTer doesn't actually exist? (And how could it, it makes no sense to buy something and flip it for a profit when there is no rarity for anything new?)

    In the other thread you posted about how all the "pixel flippers" are all wound up, right after @majoria70 s post. Well, she's not a pixel flipper. So, why might she be wound up?

    Why might I have suddenly sold more of my old rewards in a few months (should sell more but I really don't like the whole process) than all my years combined? What's going on here?

    Worth asking, if you happen to be running a pixel crack store and want to understand your sales figures.
     
  14. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    This is definitely an option... But as soon as they do it, they're gonna put the resellers back in business, and THAT isn't acceptable...

    I understand what your saying about the multiple accounts, the "no-trade" problem and all the inconveniences that come along with it...
    "I own about 50 accounts, so I get it"
    BUT!!! I also get where the company is coming from, and why it must be done this way...
    Those multiple accounts that I created back in the day, was so I could get a bunch of cool stuff for a $5 bill on each account, that I could also resell and basically undercut the online store that Port has every right to sell the same gear for themselves to generate cash flow.

    So from a business perspective...
    Who cares about my 50 extra accounts on top of my few primary accounts? Those accounts were my decision to start up...
    See what I mean?
     
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  15. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    I wasn't singling @majoria70 out...
    I made a general statement that happens to be true.

    Your post has brought names into it... ;)

    And everything I have said IS true...

    There's plenty in this game that can be sold for RMT, that the players can "work" to produce.
    Not just flip rewards and crown shop pixel candy.

    P.S.
    I still have all my pledge, telethon, and tradable rewards...
    Chests, & chests, & chests, & chests, & chests, & chests of them...
    Haven't sold any of them... Yet... :)
     
    Last edited: Dec 3, 2019
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    100,000 times correct, except I hear they made a craftable gnome. So if that's the case at least they are still putting in some new recipes sometimes?

    Why don't I, a furniture store owner, know for sure about the craftable gnome? Well, when we tried to redo the town with the deco palett, and one lot for Halloween, I got so frustrated I just threw my hands up (again, did it previously about how bad the vendor UI still is) and stopped decoing. Now Viola's trying to finish up, but looks like she's bored because I'm not spending much time in game.

    Maybe people like us aren't the intended audience anymore, and they want a single player who has only one account and no one playing with them to be the target audience. Bold move. Going from "You could corner the MMO housing market if you'd JUST advertise to the right audience (Sims players, a boundless ocean)" to "go away unless you deco our way"... bold move.

    And lets not forget that gift giving season is upon us, and I have already been apologized to once because COTO's are the replacement for getting someone something you think they will like out of the store. Yay! The gift card age is here in Shroud! And it is the only option from here on out.

    Finally, economy. The movement of goods creates a value of its own, an excitement and energy. The company becoming the sole producer and seller of those items, and locking them down against trade, puts a large dampener on the IN GAME economy, as those items will never generate any energy. Thus, the in game economy has peaked. No one will ever see anything new, and thus it is suddenly very, very boring (to me). Previously, it was essentially endless, with new and interesting things coming for the lifetime of the game. Now it is a known quantity, a fenced off subset, to participate in.
     
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  17. Vladamir Begemot

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    I know you weren't, but you posted right after her and she's clearly never been a pixel flipper. So perhaps you are off base on what you think is going on here.

    Again, pixel flipping was a fools game, what, over a year ago now? It was dead as a door nail when they reduced Commission Free Vendors, but it was probably on the way out a month or two after launch.

    And it's dead dead dead since the bundles went away.

    The only pixel flipping that happens at this point is people wanting to get something out of their pledges when they leave, or get a few hundred bucks to spend on Christmas. That's not flipping! That's selling off your old crap.

    So, telling people that they are wrong for being angry that they can't pixel flip anymore... that audience isn't even here. None of us are going to go "pick up an ax" so we can get our RMT business going again because those people all left after launch.

    I can keep selling crafted furniture, and RMT the profits if I like, so if that were my thing this wouldn't have affected me at all. So why does it rub me so wrong? That's what you need to be asking. Telling people "stop being lazy and go be a miner and sell that for money" is literally talking to no one here.

    So... what's going on here? Why would people dislike this system, that's what you and Port need to ask.
     
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  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    Cutting off their nose to spite their face.
     
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  19. Duke Ezekiel Cooper

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    It's not dead brother...
    Some of us still have a "MOUNTAIN" of stock...

    And you don't have to be a miner to RMT in this game...
    I know a guy that chops wood and sells that sh*t for gold, flips the gold, and then starts it all over on Mondays...

    He's made more money in 5 years than both of us put together! LOL!
     
  20. Mishikal

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    I see that I wouldn't take an economics class from you. ;)

    RMT was driven by two things:

    a) Scarcity (Created by Port itself)

    b) High prices to buy items directly from Port

    Lets talk about (a) first.

    I bought a special edition version of Monopoly in the year 2000. It sits in my closet in its original packaging. Lets say I bought it in 2000 for $50 (I don't recall the actual price). Now lets say, I turn around and sell it today for $200. In Port's world, this counts as a "lost sale", where in reality, it's simply a function of scarcity (limited edition item). Of course, now Port has destroyed the scarcity of these items by introducing the Vault (and generally caused a meltdown in RMT prices). So (a), outside of Founder deeds, no longer exists in SOTA, and this has generally been reflected in the market.

    Now lets cover (b). Port acknowledged at one point that its prices were ridiculously high and said they were going to address that... but haven't. The last RMT transaction I did was to pick up a Founder's TF PA Village deed for $140. Now, assuming I have the quest reward (POT row lot deed, bound), and I want to take it to a TF PA village deed (Still lacking the water component!), then it would cost me anywhere from $214 to $307 depending on what Crown bundles I purchased. I'm sure that once again, Port would (incorrectly) consider this a lost sale. Incorrect because I didn't have $200-$300 to spend on a deed, but I did have $140.

    Or, to discuss the latter item more in the concept of economics:

    I produce a widget that I sell for $50. If I sell 100 of those, I now have $5000.
    Now lets say I drop the price of that widget to $25, and sell 300 because my widget is now more affordable for more people. Now I'm at $7500. So I've significantly increased my profits.

    However, things get even more interesting in the digital items world. While there is a cost associated with creating an item, it's a one time cost. Once revenue has exceeded that initial cost, everything is pure profit. For real world items, there's a materials cost for /every/ item that's created & sold. So digital items have an advantage that their profit margin can increase substantially the more of them that are sold past the initial cost.

    With (a) already destroyed, the only thing that keeps what's left of the RMT market alive is the absurdly high prices Port charges for items in the store (even heritage items!). Reasonable pricing would remove most cases of what's left of RMT. Is there always going to be a person who rather spend $2 on item X instead of $5? Sure. But most people are going to go (if the price is right) for the simple convenience of being able to get what they want immediately (via the store) instead of trying to have to hunt down and find someone selling what they want for a lower price.
     
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