Lot Selection Sequence Process

As of Monday, there were 43 Dukes... I believe your assessment of the situation to be accruate.

 

Thanks for starting this in a brand new thread.

 

I pledged a small amount over the minimum for my tier solely for the purposes of improving my position in the lot selection process, based on Portalarium's announcement that greater pledge amounts would have precedence over smaller pledge amounts at the same tier level for lot selection.

Based on that, even a $0.01 pledge difference should have an impact on lot selection. If Portalarium reneges on its original commitment about that ("Is that virtuous? --U6) and decides to deem some non-equal pledge amounts as equivalent for purposes of lot placement, then I would want the opportunity to receive a refund for my pledge above the minimum pledge amount for the lot placement slot, since it could be that the ONLY reason I pledged the additional amount was to improve my lot selection slot.

To clarify, the minimum pledge for a Royal Founder Lord was $1,500. But if I pledged, for example, $1,550 and Portalarium now decrees that Royal Founder Lords who pledged $1,501 - $1,700 will have the same lot placement window, then I would want the opportunity to have $49 refunded to me, since an additional $1 pledge turns out to be as valuable as my $50 (or even someone else's $200) additional pledge for lot placement purposes in this example. And I would expect a monetary refund, not a credit at the add-on store, etc.

 

You seem to confuse "Backing" with "Buying". If I back the proyect up to "Knight" level, and then, for a very natural desire to to choose first, I back it up with 1 or with 200, I am not buying the earlyer time slot: I would be granted an earlier time slot as a reward for my "Backing" support and as elsewhere, granted rewards fall within brackets of that effort which is being rewarded. As simple as that.

 

I do not know if it is possible, but I would prefer system where every extra dollar would give you a 1 minute headstart or something like that. That would spread people more and every dollar would count. I guess it would be hard to implement.

 

It would not be hard, just a simple calculation. They already have to calculate people's start times anyway. No additional code at the start gate since a time check has to be done there already.

 

1 minute for every dollar? could be 1,500 minutes head start, and take that long just to finish a single era. (royal founder). over a full day for 1 era, 1 tier. 3 days to get through the lords.

 

It was just an example it can be 10 seconds or it can be different for different tiers. LotM could spende extra $10000 to have extra week On the other hand for Citizens or Ancestors the window is much smaller. It might be time divided by lot size per extra dollar.

 

Well, it sounds good, the idea of publishing the totals needed. However, the question is, if each tier has it's own X number assigned for how much you had to pledge over minimum to be in a certain group. And if that number is assigned based on how much people in that tier had pledged over the base minimum amount. Then it stands to reason, that potentially, the minimum number to be in each group should change if they publish and there is a mass change as people scramble to hit those numbers.
Admitedly. they could ignore recalculating. And stick with the initial numbers. But, the groups would likely become lopsided.
I mean, if I was in the last group to place, and it cost $20 to move up to the middle group, I would drop the $20 in a heart beat. And like you said, if first selection is really important to you, you might drop several hundred dollars to get in the first selection group. I just kind of think, that with a published known number, and several days or a couple of weeks advanced notice of amount to pledge up to, if the cost wasn't to bad, I don't think there would be many sitting there wanting to be in the last group to pick for their tier.

 

@Darkstarr

I have a question I kind of asked in the New Pledge Rewards thread, but it should be in here.

With the new additional 2nd lot deeds given to certain pledge tiers, can a higher pledge use that 2nd deed during their early lot placement time and then use the larger size lot deed during the Add-On placement time frame?

example: LoTM gets a Castle Lot Deed and a 2nd lot deed which is a Town Lot Deed. Can he/she claim a Town or smaller lot with the 2nd Town Lot Deed then wait for Add-On placement to start to claim his or her Castle Lot at that time since there isn't much competition at that tier level? I know the description says the 2nd deed can only be used during the Add-On lot placement time frame, but is the deed available for use? Is the account restricted to just one lot claim during your group placement up until Add-On starts then your account has no restrictions and you can claim as many lots as you want or is the 2nd deed blocked from being used and only the Castle Deed is usable?

This could cause an unfair advantage if the 2nd deed is not restricted or unavailable during the Tier Lot Placements.

 

Not at all. My objection is that Portalarium encouraged backing with various promises of rewards, one of which was preferred lot placement for players with larger pledges, which they are now considering not implementing for technical reasons.

 

Nothing was said about this in the actual Kickstarter page.

As far as I know you guys said nothing about this lot selection priority before the very last day of the campaign on 4/6/2013 and it was buried in the body of text of an update.

Here's the first mention I know of:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/446984

"**Village waterfront lots available to Village, Town, or City property deed holders; higher value pledges have lot selection priority over lower value pledges**)"

"(**Town waterfront lots available to Town or City property deed holders; higher value pledges have lot selection priority over lower value pledges**)"

"(**City waterfront lots available to City property deed holders; higher value pledges have lot selection priority over lower value pledges**)"

I don't appreciate having the size of my pledge dictate what order I get to participate in placing a house. It strikes me as very Pay2Win.

 

I hope that the person trying to game the system in such a way gets a bad lot location and ends up sweating in misery. But yes, a dev response would be good

 

It was during kickstarter videos. That was part of their promises that they agreed to even though it was going to be difficult to accomplish. Dallas kept saying the amount of your pledge mattered for lot priority. (especially in the last 24 hours). It was discussed by dev+ people quite a bit on how to best handle this. If you don't engage in those conversations we can't hear your voice to help sway popular opinion on the matter. The current way seems to satisfy many people. I am at a base tier(lord) as is my brother and father. We are all minimum pledge lords and believe it is just, and right for them to place before us. Do you have an argument to persuade us that they shouldn't place before us?

 

@Tamino

what pledge level are you currently at now, might I ask?

 

Dev answer would be good but I hope not. You can place smaller lot if you want, but given that higher pledgers are first, I think it would be bad idea to allow this, because the last people to place their primary lots ('low' spending Benefactors) would place their secondary lots first, but they would not really lose their position for primary lot placement. So then Royal Founder Knights who are supposed to be the first group to place Village lot would encounter a lot of best lots already taken... I do not have problem if Lord decides he wants to have the best Row lot rather than a good town lot. But it is a sacrifice he has to made.

 

All the secondary lots have caveats attached to them which disallow their use until the very end of the lot selection process.

From : https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...wned-towns-stretch-goal-store-megapost.11465/

 

So, no matter how soon you stepped up to support this project unless you had a butt ton of money to throw at it, you are pretty much bottom of the barrel. Nice, really nice.

 

Depends on the view. Even early royal founders from kick starter get plenty of nice little rewards if they chose to stay put. Same with founders and even benefactors. It does give more as the tiers go up, but that person is risking more investment on a promise not yet made.

 

My account is a second responder, royal founder acct. I am thinking I will be just as well off if I sell my account and if and when the game is released, buying a copy.