How do you feel about the land rush? Would an alternative lot distribution option be viable?

I'll let you take credit for coming up with that one.

 

#FacePalmOccupied

 

Here's the problem with that.

The real culprit here is the decision to allow higher level pledges to take lower level plots.

Heres why:
If that rule was not in place, and players had to choose their main pledge plot during the rush, there would actually be a fair rush. Every pledge level would be rushing to get their desired lot. Now, it is almost guaranteed that most if not all NPC lots will be taken in the first few groups, who is going to rush for a lot in a random PRT with no services, no NPCs, no lore, nothing? It certainly isn't what I was expecting, and I'm also certain I'm not alone in this.

And that leads to this:
There has been, for some time now, a divide in the community between the high and low level backers, whether real or perceived. Now, that gulf is about to be physically reinforced with location. Didn't pay enough? Well you have to live out there, sorry. Does this seem like a good thing for SotAs longevity? That's a matter of opinion, I guess.

Now to answer your comment.

When the decision was announced (EDIT: REDACTED), we DID raise a cry, but our complaints fell on deaf ears. And there was no way to know what kind of fallout to expect at that point, so the conversation died down.

Not until the amount of NPC towns available at wipe was announced, and therefore the approximate amount of available NPC town lots, did the true insidious nature of this decision become apparent.

PRTs were, I believe, originally supposed to be for people to live in if they wanted a bunch of lots together, things like that. Not as virtual ghettoes where everyone is forced to live because they can't afford a real town... with lore and story behind it, with npcs milling about, which actually feels alive, and that anyone actually cares about.

 

I see that's the root of your concern. That's where the front line is, yes.

I don't disagree that the outcome will be less lower tiered NPC towns. But from the kickstarter backers were told that the more you pledge the more you moved up in line during the land rush. I mean, this was two years ago. So the battle has been going on for a while now and it looks like the higher pledges are just about to take over the capital and raise a new flag.

Sorry for the continued war analogy, but it fits so well.

Well sure, it's an opinion. But I share that opinion so, let's talk about if it's good for SOTA's longevity.

I would say that it's debatable. But we do have UO that is still running and people may not have paid real money for those spots but they certainly got there before most of the people alive playing MMO's were even old enough to use a computer. So it's not like it's written in stone anywhere that if you have people that paid more for the "best spots" verses squatted them in the first days of the game it will be better or worse for a game's longevity. There's risk there, I clearly see that. But there's risk the other way too...not everyone is going to be happy regardless, wouldn't you agree?

There have been changes to housing, there's no doubt. Row houses for example, and POTs didn't exist in the Kickstarter. But I think originally the Kickstarter had some kind of system envisioned where larger houses could go anywhere and village lots could only exist in the smaller towns. Here, read this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/posts/434752
The deeds are either city, town, or village deeds. City being the rarest and most valuable, followed by towns and then villages. If someone chooses to, they can use their City deed to claim a lot in a town or village and town deeds can claim in villages. Villages are good only for villages.

So yeah, there was a change, but you can see that the change actually gave lower tiers more freedom to place deeds wherever they wanted. For example, being able to put a village deed in a city like Britanny at all was never possible in the original design.

Here's the thing Bubonic. What you see as "insidious" I see as "benign". I'm really a very skeptical person, but I've come to understand decisions like this as being more practical in nature and I feel like it's a jump in logic to assume the developers are always trying to pull one over on us. I know sometimes the decisions stink. Sometimes I don't like them either.

I'll give you a perfect example. I HATE that the black and white dye in the add-on store is not replenishable. No one in the game gets black or white dye unless they pay $8 or they go through the secondary market, and once you run out you have to do it again. Now for me, this is like playing an FPS and being told that you can buy heat seeking rockets but they're only available in the add-on store so you'll either pay the money or use another type of rocket that you may not enjoy as much. I don't like that and I was very vocal about it. No one else in the community seems to mind at all, and I think I was almost universally alone in my hatred for this decision.

However, I don't see the decision as part of an ongoing plot to ruin the game for people that don't pay money. Nor do I think the developers were "being greedy". I just think the developers successfully found a way to monetize black and white dye. So although the cost and importance of dye is not the same has housing, the business practice is similar in some ways. You have a limited supply that is only available by paying money or through the secondary market (or for housing there's a lottery or auction). You have something people find valuable, and it has limited use. If you want more of it (in the case of housing this would be a better spot in line) you have to pay more.

I don't have a problem with that as a way to fund the game. I just don't like the details of how players that want black and white dye will have to continuously obtain more if it as it runs out. It would be like if our house deeds expired after EP1 and we didn't have them anymore after that unless we bought a new deed.

But my point here is that it's not an attack on anyone. If you disagree with it that's fine, but painting the picture that it's some type of deviant behavior is wrong, imo. Which is what the tin foil hat guys do all the time (you know who I'm talking about). Every move that Portalarium makes is some kind of plot to take over the world. Every decision or act of moderating the forums is "keeping people silent". The conspiracy theories feed on one another until it all just sounds the same, Portalarium is the dark side of the force and "we warned you the sky was falling! you should've listened to us as we read the chicken bones and watched the planetary alignments! It has been foretold that player housing would be one of the 7 mortal sins that would wreck the cosmic bond between space and time! The other sins being POTs, forum rules, and what were we talking about? Oh yeah, insidiousness!"

Bubonic, at this point you can say that I'm just being dismissive of your feelings. But that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to appeal to your logical side and using some humor in the process. I'm not trying to offend you, just the tin foil hat people in another land.

Yeah I think I heard something like that before. I'm not sure how solid that was. As I remember it there were conversations about it, but at some point that changed. The "virtual ghettoes" label seems like a dramatic shift from what PRT's could be though. Aren't all areas "for people to live in if they wanted a bunch of lots together" capable of being "virtual ghettoes" if the players make them that way? I don't ever remember PRTs being as dynamic as POTs even in early conversations. I'd like to hear more about this if you have information. I think the first PRT's were really created as more of an answer to the pre-alpha housing shortages during the very first releases.

Now I agree that if the original idea was that the towns would form more organically in-game by players of like minds, yeah that's not what happened. But if you took over the project today and for the sake of argument that was your ONLY concern, how would you even begin to go about fixing that to be more like what was originally talked about? I mean, that's a lot of work.

Back to the war analogy. So you're General Robert E Lee and you have a choice. You can surrender or you can keep fighting by marching to Washington to try to take back over the development of this game in your vision. What's the game look like then? Do we have enough funding for that? Do we have enough time for that? Does the game survive that?

Is this making a better game? I would say it's not. I would say that continuing to litigate decisions that were made years ago is actually scorching the earth you're trying to defend. It's time for peace. It's time to move forward.

 

Well, I did clarify that I might be mistaken on when the decision was made. The rest of my points still stand.

Hold on there, cowboy. I never once inferred, or intended to infer, that the developers were being in any way deceitful or "trying to pull one over on us". Those are your words, and yours alone. "Insidious" as in "proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects".

I don't believe this issue was intentional. What I believe is that A) they somehow didn't take this part of the equation into account, or B) they made some relatively serious miscalculations. In the end, it doesn't matter how it happened, because here we are. And it's a bummer.

That's not the point. Once again, the point is, we don't have a choice in the matter.

I can't help but notice that no where in your response did you actually address the point that until we knew the amount of NPC towns available at wipe, we were unaware of the exact situation. Which was very recently.

Yes, we all know that you (and probably most super high level backers) wish that I would just be quiet and go away. But, unlike you, I think this is an important issue that needs to be discussed by the developers.

 

On to Washington we go then.

Actually Bubonic, my goal is not for you to be quiet or go away. My goal is to make a better game than what we have today.

I'm sure that even after July 28th these things will continue to be litigated by some people. Much like "trammel killed UO" or "the south shall rise again!" But I'll be busy playing the game and hopefully will not hear any of it.

 

Well, not really. Because even though I am shouting at the rafters, and expressing how I feel... do I really believe that anything is going to come of it? Do I believe that the developers are going to hear my concerns and actually do anything to make the situation better?

Not really. And not because they have something against anyone, but because they have painted themselves into a corner.

 

Yes, they have painted themselves into a corner. A development schedule that has a last wipe on July 28th and a launch sometime after that. They're making decisions that can't really change now.

So what are you doing to help that process? I agree that it's highly unlikely that anything will change. But what if you started to suggest other ways to make it better that did not involve essentially going back in a time machine and changing the reality we are in now?

If PRTs stink, how could the devs make them better? (using practical and actionable solutions)

That's all I'm saying. I'm not telling you to be quite or go away. I'm just saying that much like I can't stand the combat system, we are where we are, so I try to improve that system to the best of my ability. I try to add ideas that will steer the developers towards a combat system that is the best it can be based on practical and actionable solutions. If I could go back in time and yell at them some more when it mattered, I would.

 

I do agree that improving PRTs would go a long way towards fixing this issue. And how to do that? On paper, its easy: make them more like a regular town. Add services. Add random npcs walking around. Make them interesting, and not carbon copies.


But then again... how can they possibly have time to do that in the next 6 months, considering they also have to add 25 or so more NPC towns? And how many PRTs will they need to add? A lot. I don't think that's possible, to be honest.

 

Well I know my approach would be to create some type of PRT templates. the PRTs out there now are just one template basically, right? Is there any difference between PRTs? So essentially you'd have POTs without owners. There's already a dynamic POT system that could be leveraged for that.

Doesn't sound impossible, just something the devs would need to support.

 

Since there's no time to create new templates for PRT's. I'd be happy with different biomes and them being the POT templates. The current PRT's are just forests with roads going in a circle, no bridges, no hills, just the same trees everywhere. They're so dull I don't even want to visit them, even though I put a house in them.

 

Its called reading between the lines.

 

Er... ok then?

 

So if a Duke who has lot placement in front of you wants a to be in a certain city for what ever reason. You don't want him to have that spot, but he paid more than you to have it? Cuz towns have a max of 3 keep and castle placements and we are talking about Ardoris, Owls head and maybe one or two more.

I am not one of those Dukes. Upon release you are welcome to look at my glorious keep in all its wonder on top of the hill in Serenite.

At least you are honest about your intentions. The solution isnt really possible until Devs make more Duke/LOTM placements.

So lets say that they do make more placements...

What happens if I am right? We will have even more ghost towns. As it is there will be double if not triple the lots available for each deed because of the 200+ player owned towns.

We have to be very careful what we wish for, because we might just get it. This will also make POTS even more undesirable.

 

And I quote
Mark 12:17
"Give to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar, give to God what belongs to God."

 

It's not my intention, at all. I want all land rush lot placements to be limited to the deed size (not smaller/lower), to prevent higher tiers from poaching lower tiers.
That would be fair, imo. You get exactly what you paid for. (not what someone else paid for)
Unfortunately, that's not what's going to happen, with the current situation and silence from Portalarium on this contentious issue.
With the current situation, all the prime spots will be poached at every tier, long before the bulk of that tier even gets a chance at lot selection. Gonna be a bad month.

 

I have no idea what that means.

 

All I can think of (not sure why religious phrases need to come into discussions about game housing, but ok...)

 

I can only assume you have not read any of my very detailed posts, as you appear to have no idea what I was referring to.

Perhaps you should investigate further before wasting so much of your own time.

 

Do you really think its fair to not allow someone to place their keep deed on a town home in owls head? Especially when it was decided this wayy by devs?

Owls head has two or 3 castle/keep lots. So with your idea only 3 duke and lotm can live there at the moment. So if I change my mind and want to live in owls head and rent out my city I can't now because you changed the agreement.

I have no idea why or how you see this as fair? What if the Duke and or LOTM really want to live there because they want to start a crafting business and have vendors there? For some people a lucrative place to sell their wares(like owl's head) holds more value than a spot on a hill in a POT no one may ever visit.

This is ridiculous that we are even having this discussion.