New Pledge Rewards, New Pledge Tiers, Player Owned Towns & Stretch Goal Store Megapost

Going to have to disagree with giving a discount for new tiers being released at founder prices. It was a kickstarter thing, then extended an entire additional year. If people are unable to find the value in upgrading at normal prices then don't. I was a Lord who went to Baron back at the reduced price. Now I went to Duke. I essentially payed $500.00 extra but it's all part of the game development and what I'm willing to part with. If I wanted reduced prices I should of chose Duke before the Founder prices ended, not because I wanted the keep lot that was added. New tiers that we're added was based on community feedback, it wasn't part of kickstarter and therefore, shouldn't be a reason to offer reduced founder prices again.

 

I agree with you completely!

 

That's an interesting proposition, but it still asks Founders and Royal Founders who go to those tiers to spend $50 / $100 more than they should be spending. Store credit isn't the same as cash in pocket, especially now that Lord Marshals won't have much use for Prosperity tools.

 

The difference is - these things you would have had and have been able to use/enjoy/consume or sell them any time.

Our pledge rewards until now are not much more than a promise for a not yet existing game. So at least preserving the difference between the founders current pledges founder price and the benefactor price as bonus should be a matter of maintaining trust and showing gratitude.

But oh well, I know at least 3 people, who will not upgrade for the pure benefactor prices, but would consider otherwise if the founder bonus is maintained. Also for the higher level pledges this difference is no peanuts (heck not even what PayPal or the bank did hide on fees for currency exchange are not) - and so the potential income for Portalarium isn't.

 

Granted... however, it satisfies several needs.

• It gives Founders something at each of those levels to offset the financial penalty.
• It doesn't cost Portalarium any additional development work.
• It only costs Portalarium digital assets.

 

Except they're not. You can still pledge $45 and get a nice house, village lot, basement, and most of the other rewards in-game... there are exclusives because they're backer rewards but the key things here aren't. People pledge to support a game not to get access to it and it's features... they're just working on trying to make the rewards so good that more people want to pledge without making them overly good to cause issue with gameplay and the game... which is why most of them appear to be cosmetic rewards (like plaques and decorations) and not game changing (I'm looking at you founder armor and weapons...)

edit: I'd like to make sure I take a moment to clarify this isn't as much information for Joviex, as I'm sure he knows it, as a chance to make a public reminder...

Additionally, people might feel like they're getting milked here but the reality is this game needs millions of dollars more and they've made more money on collectors and explorers than they have on dukes and lord of the manors... did you guys notice that? So now they're making some of those lower tiers more ... incentivised? Lets get some fundraising done and enjoy what game we get in the process And they're making the higher tiers look a little bit sweeter as well hoping that some of the others will come up and join those of us who made the plunge and went all in on this dream.

 

I do believe Darkstarr said in the Dev+ forums on the original post of this topic, that starter tools are still a lessor quality then the prosperity tools in the store, though the starter ones can be upgraded over time.

 

I am backing both projects from more or less their starts, and no disrespect to anyone, but I see Star Citizen as having been much more clear in what funding they want and what they will do with the funding.
It was abundantly clear (for me) with SC that initially they wanted the Kickstarter funds to prove there was an audience to investors (this was later changed to full funding via backers only).
I never got any such partial financing vibes during SotA's campaign, I figured that the use of Unity as engine was cost effective and that Portalarium knows what they are doing.

(Of course things can change as one walks down a road, but hopefully a changed perspective will be clearly communicated to the participants (backers) in such a case (if a perspective is indeed changed).

Back to SC - I am astounded (in a positive way) every week at SC's still fast increasing funding.
I am very happy for them but I don't really understand where that money keeps coming from

I am also hoping very very much that Portalarium will succeed in generating lots and lots of new backers to joins us existing ones.
That is key to more funding.
(This turned out rather longer than I intended, sorry about that )

 

I was going to suggest this as well. Perhaps limit the humans to 2 affinities of their choice.

 

Will Town Owners be able to flag a town/hex as PvP+ for all?

Can Player Town Owners flag other players as "Outlaws" and open to attack by NPC or Player Guards?

 

I can absolutely respect this thought.
But I can also add a thought that Royal Founders could keep lower pricing in pledge packages indefinitely (but they should be non giftable, period).
I mean, why not, the Kickstarters are the ones that got the ball rolling?

 

I know. Speaking for myself personally, though, I can't think of anything at all I would use a $100 credit for the Addon Store to buy. That idea would become more palatable I think if we could use that credit in the Stretch Goal store, but that seems unlikely given the model that's been established.

Anyway, instituting the discount for a short time also only costs Portalarium digital assets and doesn't cost additional development work. I think all solutions to this problem will have that in common, as all of them simply involve identifying Founders and Royal Founders and giving them something.

You are correct, but IMO that just devalues the Prosperity tools even more for people at that tier. Every RPG gamer knows that items that scale are ultimately better than items that don't.

 

My issues isn't about price. It's that I pledged to hit the $2M stretch goal. The idea that there would be towns with housing in them that would be meaningfully changing hands. This made PvP matter. Guilds matter. Housing and towns matter. My assumption was that crafting and resource gathering would not only value the castles and towns but be used for building things to help attack and defend them.

But this guts the entire process. There's really no "why" or "how" behind the towns and housing. It's just stuff for sale in the shop. I realize that everyone plays for different reasons and that we'd all score differently on the Bartle test, but I enjoy a game driven my motivations and mechanics. And it seems like we're taking the biggest stuff out of the actual game and making it a cash shop doll house.

More skins and cosmetics is awesome. But all of this here seems to come at the expense of the game, rather than adding to it.

 

I think somebody else asked this some place. Is there a difference between the player run hamlet/town/city, and the $2million stretch goal (which we did reach if you combine the sota funding and the kickstarter when kickstarter ended)?

In the $2mil stretch goal we are supposed to get this:

• Castles & Keeps effectively a new "Town Type", where the structure is ownable by players or guilds
• ...
• Guilds can earn a guild house and guild bank
• Guild Tabbard/Shield/Flags useable by all members
• Minimum of 5 castle types added to the game
• Castle merchants with unique merchandise
• Castle defense scenarios for most castles which can be played offline as well as online

So are these towns being sold a different thing all together than the Castles & Keeps? As a guild this is important to know. I can see that some guilds would like to live in a little community like Pax Lair, but other guilds might just want a really cool guild house/castle.

SotA Wiki - Fundraising Goals

PS. I don't care about the VR stuff, and totally support the no scope creep stuff. However this goal was reached day one.

 

I have seen them in game (not reading the book yet!), but since everything seems to be getting reskinned/messed with (animals, skeletons, etc), I was assuming those were not the 'final draft elves'.

 

Personally I wouldn't mind if our guild just had some castle eventhough it isn't a PvP guild. I know some guilds like Pax Lair like to live in their own town, but I would rather have an elaborate guildhouse/castle, with unique vendors etc. That's just me. I don't speak for every member of the Moongate Traveler's guild (MGT470).

Maybe the vendors can sell the guild tabbards, and clothing to help fund the guilds too, along with other stuff.

 

Thanks Star looking forward to upgrading tomorrow.

 

I get the feeling reading this new thread that Portalarium should have locked us Dev+ out of it.
So the non Dev+ thoughts could be clearly read.

 

What would the incentive be for there to pledge Dev+? Also if they gave us a week to chew on it, we came into a good place of agreeing with the devs "together" like dev+ should be.

Now as community members we can agree or disagree with what other community members say, but we also serve the purpose of having almost a type of ownership in the ideas because they shot the ideas around with us first, and we can put out any angry fires because we already went through all that in Dev+. So it's good for them to have a Dev+.

 

To like to know the location of this Schlitz Creek, and to know if the lake indeed contains the golden lager or malt fluid. ;p