Player owned towns now avail on the store

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Brass Knuckles, Jun 30, 2020.

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  1. Greyfox

    Greyfox Avatar

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    SOTA has been a race to the bottom since release. When you run to the bottom, don't be surprised where you finish the race. @King Robert described the problem and the SOLUTION.

    COVID isn't the cause of the declining marketplace. People staying home should have substantially increased the community and spending, especially with the 'free' taxpayer money handed out to so many for pandemic relief. I've spent plenty on gaming since lock down, nothing to SOTA.
     
  2. kaeshiva

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    I don't dispute what you're saying here. I understand the pledge funding model and that expiry drives urgency. And it does make sense. Make something only available before a certain date, and lets say 500 people flock to buy it before its gone. The problem is that while great for selling things to your existing playerbase, it doesn't do much for longevity or new customers who discover the product down the road (maybe thousands of potential players) only to find that all the things they'd be willing to spend cash on, they can't have. Anyone who discovers Sota "today" missed the boat. In the context of an online game planned to run years and for many episodes, locking out everyone who wasn't here on day 1 is turning away a lot of cash.

    Yes, a Ferrari holds its value. But Ferrari itself only gets paid once. If someone sells their Ferrari to someone else, they can get back what they paid (or more) and its a reseller's market, sure. But Ferrari isn't getting any more money out of that. They leverage their reputation for quality and value and sell the next batch of limited edition stuff, and so on. However the key difference here is that most people cannot afford a Ferrari. And an online game such as this, needs a population to survive. If I went to buy a car, and it was "ferrari!" or "walk" I can tell you which I'd be doing.

    What we're left with is a new player comes into the game and sees grand castles and all sorts of fancy things and slowly realizes that these things are completely unobtainable without going through a 3rd party market. Some will just stop there. Others will buy 3rd party which is fine and good, but Catnip doesn't get that revenue, the 3rd party does. What then, is Catnip to do? Can they survive just making time-locked limited content and hoping that the handful of folks who can afford Ferraris keep buying the new ones? At some point, I imagine, you own enough Ferraris. Interest in the game will wane. People will drop away and move on to other things. Meanwhile, game gets a reputation as needing a lot of $$ to play, which puts people off even if it isn't true.

    The bottom line is I think they need to decide - either they are going to make Ferraris and trade on brand and exclusivity, or they're going to make cars that the other 99% of the world can afford to buy and drive in hopes to make money in quantity. Trying to do both is hurting both sides, both the Ferrari buyers whose investment is cheapened, and the people on the fence looking over at the fancy they can never have.
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2020
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  3. Greyfox

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    @kaeshiva Going to be blunt and pull the band aid off. SOTA just isn't that good of a game at it's core. If it were more people would have flocked to the title with the introduction of F2P. SOTA isn't bad but so many other games are better and also Free to Play.

    SOTA is and will always be a niche title. Even Ultima Online was and continues to be a niche title.

    Spoiler alert: If all of the prices of items were reduced by 99%, we still wouldn't have a huge population playing. The hope, at least in my mine, was to continue to earn money for the game while development continued to improve the game.

    SOTA could have kept the exclusivity of items but also provided a reason to own. Implement forms of passive income for owning property. Allow us to hire NPCs that will farm resources use in crafting. Make large property ownership have intrinsic value. In the words of Jerry McGuire, Help me help you.

    I would compare SOTA not to Ferrari, not even close. I would compare SOTA to Second Life or even better Entropia. Copy their funding model and watch the money start to roll in. Deflation won't allow SOTA to grow and will stagnate without a lot more development resources. Once everyone owes Megalopolis with castles no one will care. Mark my words.
     
  4. King Robert

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    With a small development team, and titles like New World coming online, I think a small, loyal following is the only path to viability. This game has nostalgia in spades, something other large budget titles lack. I think playing to that strength is the only play for SOTA. Then let that following (when happy) expand the base by free marketing. Happy customers are the best marketing.
     
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  5. kaeshiva

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    I agree with your spoiler alert; the game needs to be fun, first and foremost, and to do that, it needs systems to be more finished.
    From my experience, frustration with broken/unfinished systems has been the biggest reason why people I've tried to get to play have bailed (and why my own playtime has diminished), that and just reaching the point of 'enough is enough'. Similar to how you've put it with Megalopolis with castles, the same applies to character development. Once you're at the level where a billion XP doesn't make a meaningful dent in your capability, what's the point? And things just keep getting pushed to the right. More XP. More double. Legendary artifacts. Epic artifacts. At the rate things are going, I'm better off stepping away for 5 years and coming back when we're on 32x the original XP rate and catching up in a week or two. This is not a good retention plan to keep me playing actively (and spending actively) for the interim.

    The Ferrari was not my example; Sota is not a shining AAA title, it is as you say a niche game, with a lot of problems both in function as well as overall philosophy. But it has depth, character, and passion, and I think if some of the intentionally-tedious, artificial obstacles were rectified, it would have further appeal. You need a playerbase first and foremost. Then you figure out how to get them to open their wallets.
     
  6. Brass Knuckles

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    Wow @everone such and good conversation and many well-put view points. It’s obvious we have brilliant people who play this game. I feel I share the view points of both greyfox an king Robert.


    The thing is I cannot think of any game I’ve play with more unfulfilled potential as this game. The potential for this game is off the charts heck even just the single branch of the player dungeon system could have been amazing if they had not abandoned it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2020
  7. kaeshiva

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    You may very well be right, but from the way things are going, it doesn't seem like the small loyal following is who is being targetted anymore. It even seems that the 'long term players' or big investors are ostracized and accused of stifling the game's progress. I just see harder and harder content being made for people who have grinded and grinded xp with little attention to the other systems that make Sota a unique gem.


    I completely agree. The sandbox elements, the crafting elements, the market elements, the player created content elements, are all systems that if fleshed out give Sota something truly unique and allows the players to create and live in a community. If I want to grind xp, lvl up, get more stuff - I can do that in any game. Personally I think its time we leave combat alone and flesh out everything else.
     
  8. King Robert

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    “Once you're at the level where a billion XP doesn't make a meaningful dent in your capability, what's the point?”

    @Elgarion @Chris - this is sage counsel. All game changes should incentivize play and/or purchase. We all want SOTA to have new customers. But keeping the ones we have, if not a priority, increases the need for new customers which will prove harder to acquire as the base dissipates.
     
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  9. Oakenhammer

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    I believe what hurt the "investment value" (i.e. ROI) in general across the game the most was not the change in rent, but rather the 50% price reduction that was made to everything (except property deeds) when the in-game store went live. The team decided to make the store prices equal to the then 50%-off sale price on the web store. Those of us that had been speculatively investing in "rares" and other limited edition items had the potential value of our entire inventory cut in half. So, we went from hoping to make a modest profit by investing early to hoping to recoup half of our expenses. The vault helped a little since those prices are equal to the original store price before the reduction, but it was still pretty painful. That being said, I do think it was the right decision to make the game more accessible and try to combat some of the negative perceptions surrounding the business model.

    At this point, the prices for property deeds probably needs to be revisited and most could use between a 40 - 60% reduction in price. Land is not scarce, especially with the addition of so many new POTs, so there is no reason to try to curb demand with high property prices. It would probably be more beneficial to the financials to drive demand for decorations by making larger housing sizes more affordable.
     
  10. Xiones

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    My 2 cents. Need to push to get an influx of new players and razzle dazzle some old players back to the game, before we start selling new Player Owned Towns. There are many Player Owned Towns that are Ghost Towns.

    Furthermore, need to connect all the Player merchants into one auction house. Maybe have a bulletin board at the entrance of the player owned town that list what player merchants are selling what, so you don't have to go door to door checking each merchant for items you are looking for. You could just click on that item, it puts the house mark on your compass, and it leads you directly to that Player Merchant. It would cut down on the searching and give players more interaction of exploring and having fun with the game......
     
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