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

I'd have to agree that to expect Portalarium to make sweeping changes to the permissions of lot placement at this late date before the final wipe seems highly unlikely. It would just invite way too much drama and headaches, imo.

I can understand the frustration that a lot of folks have about the upcoming land rush, and personally, regardless if everything goes completely smoothly (no crashes, no latency issues, etc), there's still likely to have some hard feelings. I don't really see any way that would be more or less fair at this point, since it's always subjective to everyone's availability. I did like that they are trying to help streamline some of the process ahead of time (like keeping the players' personal info, lining out POT locations, etc), which will hopefully keep it as smooth as possible.

I don't agree with removing features that the high level backers did pay for in good faith.

 

Whenever majority rule is involved, the minority with money invested will lose. It you had invested the old-fashioned way--investing cash for a piece of the profit and various extras, there would be no vote to take away what you were promised. That is one of the reasons software developers sometimes like this way better, but if you have a lot of money invested, do you like it more? Is it the future? I say it is not.

 

The Developers have already announced their plan and staging for the land rush selections. This is debate among players, but the "rule" ultimately remains in Port's hands to decide. We'll see how well or not it works out when July rolls around.

 

I feel like a blind bid process may be a better solution.

Example:

Players have 1000 "bid points to start with"
They can bid up to a maximum of 100 on a given lot.
Bids can be placed well well in advance of their turn.
Nobody can see any bids on any particular lot.

Winner of a lot is determined in the following order

1. Tier group (to a maximum of 1 claimed lot)
2. Points bid on lot
3. In case of a tie, the order of the bid (or if preferred, random selection)

Lot selection is resolved at the timetable described in the stickied thread.
I. E. When group 1 is active, any bids outstanding for that tier are resolved, the winner gets the lot, the loser gets their points refunded if they want to pick another lot. Bids are resolved with each player hopefully getting a claimed lot, if none are claimed, their points are refunded and they can go choose another lot (most likely winning) when the next group resolves itself.

 

I think the problem with a blind bid is that we're left with a lot more people who didn't get any lots and have to land rush anyway which is what I'd like to prevent. Plus, it would take quite a long time to get through each phase of bidding whereas with the way I had originally posted, it would be almost instant across the board.

In a way it would be like bidding only instead of points it's using your account age/pledge value as your chips.

 

i for one am not going to participate in the land rush. Because Reasons.

 

The land rush is actually one of the major reasons I'm here at all. It was a huge selling point to me that we would not have instanced housing and instead we'd get to have a special moment in the game's history where "anything could happen". I'm really looking forward to hearing the stories, reading the complaining forum posts, and seeing people freak out.

If there were a way to have a land rush without making people unhappy, I'd be for that. I'm not trying to say that I want people to be upset. However I do long for a persistent world where it's POSSIBLE for people to be upset over things that actually matter. That's good for roleplaying. I don't enjoy (or play) in sterile theme park environments like WOW and EQ for this very reason. Everyone gets a participation trophy in those games and if you play long enough you'll "achieve" some kind of recognition for having played long enough (be it gear or levels or whatever).

I'm not interested in that. I want to play in a virtual world where people don't always have everything go their way. Where stupid people that make stupid choices don't get rewarded because they're stupid. That's not to say that everyone that doesn't get the lot they want is stupid, it's just to say that people now have an opportunity to prove how smart they are. No one knows what spots will be "the best". It's all speculation. So I can't wait for the land rush, I think it's going to be fun to participate in and I think it's going to be fun to watch over the coming months.

 

I think part of that hits the nail on the head. There's zero way to ever make EVERYONE happy, especially when dealing with as many folks involved. There are people upset because their time falls when they may have to work or handle personal time. There's folks upset because they're in different time zones and/or countries that is inconvenient. There are folks upset because of their pledge dates and how they fall into the mix. There are people upset just to be upset sometimes!

I'm less of a fan of wanting something to be antagonizing for the sake of it (I deal with plenty enough headaches in RL on how best laid plans go awry), but I can understand that challenges and the like are important for a sense of accomplishment. The land rush itself is something I personally want to see handled with as much prior planning as possible, since there are obviously going to be hiccups along the way to overcome. I think once it's done, and the virtual dust settles down, we can actually see how the community starts to grow.

 

I suppose, overall the lack of npc town slots (let's be real these are the desirable ones) is what will drive the land rush. And, given that there really isn't a huge demand or ideally located city and up slots (and those slots and designs themselves are not really optimal for commerce). We have a huge glut of baron+ level backers who will use their privilege to claim the ideal mercantile town spots and utilize tertiary locations that don't require optimal location to claim their large homes.

So, I guess that's my issue. The places I'd really want to locate will be zonked by the time I get to pick.

 

There is always the secondary market. (in-game and out)

I'm planning to use my Keep Lot Deed to secure a good spot and then sell it off after the land rush.

 

Meh, secondary market after dropping dang near 2k into a kickstarter? I'd prefer not.

 

I kind of said it as a joke elsewhere.

But what if they replaced all the PTRs with dev ran POTs. I mean... it's not as unique as the NPC towns but certainly moreso than PTRs at least depending on how good the devs actually run it lol,

 

My feeling is that this cat left the barn a year or more ago when the first lot selection prioritization approach was posted. That approach indicated that those who pledged more in a pledge category would be given priority. We might imagine people did that to get that priority then. The dollars for that are contributed. It's too late to reel it back in. Commitments are commitments, even more so when you have been paid for your commitment.

 

Of course when this was discussed a year ago, the people in the discussion did not realise the availability of lots in NPC towns would be so scarce even among those who paid the most. POTs hadn't happened yet and PRT's where still conceptual. It's hardly fair to say that with the information we had available then we ironed out the issue in any comprehensive way. Commitments are commitments but all we hear day in day out is don't lawyer me bro and things change. There's more then one way to keep your commitments, there's nothing wrong with trying to come up with ideas that try to cater better to more people. After all that seems to be the big idea behind SotA.

 

Thanks. I'm glad I'm not the only one who is aware of this simple fact.

 

I am guessing that at least 50% of Pledges in the Knight Marshal and above are also thinking the same thing

And as a result this is going to cause problems

 

I don't know what the percentage of people are that will do that. But any "problems" that people have with that are misplaced. The formula was always, pay more get a better spot in line for the land rush. The formula was never, pay more so you can push yourself out of the range of the best spots.

[I believe] The truth is, even if we made it so no one could use their higher tier pledges to claim lower tier lots, the same exact people would be unhappy about the land rush. The same people are always going to find a reason to complain. I think if we had the luxury of performing the land rush both ways (with and without higher tier pledges claiming lower tier lots) we'd see virtually no change in the reaction by people that are prone to complain and quick to find fault with just about everything.

 

It's possible you are correct, but my personal preference is to give people the benefit of the doubt and treat their concerns as genuine rather then dismiss them out of hand. They might complain either way, doesn't mean the complaints aren't necessarily worth addressing.
And it doesn't change the fact that just because there will always be some people who complain, it doesn't mean it's not worth making the effort to make sure your plans and decisions don't give more people legitimate complaints.
I feel it's worth investing the time for the devs to consider alternatives. As do they, since as we've seen, they are. They've got their work cut out for them though. I can't think of a clean solution here. But it's still worth looking for the least messy one.

 

Well said. If there's feedback from the community that something is not to our liking that's important to capture and understand. I'm glad people post that here and I'm glad the developers are wise enough to listen.

In the case of the land rush, this has been noted and listened to quite a bit over the years. There's nothing new to see here. The feedback has been given ten fold and the developers have listened 20 fold. That's when feedback becomes complaining. Is that still valuable to the process? Perhaps, but I find that the conversation of full loot pvp sums this up rather well. SOTA is a game that will always be 100% consensual pvp. That's something that was made pretty clear by the developers, so when pvp rabid fans show up here asking for full loot non-consensual pvp the community rightly dismisses that.

Imagine for a moment if we used your same logic for non-consensual full loot pvp. "I feel it's worth investing the time for the devs to consider alternatives. As do they, since as we've seen, they are. They've got their work cut out for them though. I can't think of a clean solution here. But it's still worth looking for the least messy one." How would that be any different than what's going on here?

I believe the same thing (the community dismissing this) is in order here. This is a game that will have a land rush and the more you pay the better spot in line you'll get. It's been like that from the beginning. So what are people complaining about? That the grass is not blue and the sky is not green?

 

I disagree largely because it's an iterative process. We give feedback, they make changes, we give feedback on the changes. The debate sounds the same but the terms are constantly changing and yes I'd say assessing our current position is always valuable and worth while. And if changes don't address the original complaints they are probably worth restating too as new avenues to approach them may have opened up.

When this campaign first started I made inquiries so I could voice concerns if necessary. Even to this day you will hear "It's too soon to say for certain so save your feedback for when we know more", heck I've even heard it said in context this very issue no less then a month ago. I mostly have been saving it to. But as the picture becomes clearer I see more reason to speak up. I've waited this long to weigh on issues, I'm not going to be waved aside now. I and others.

If you're sick of hearing it speaks volumes as to the general feeling of the current approach.

But I like you're full loot example. Because the developers approach hasn't been were not doing full loot because we don't like it or because we said we wont and we stick our guns (because sticking to their guns is not this teams strong suit, Richard is renowned for being swayed by fresh opinions). No, the dev's attitude on full loot has always been that they want to try something that works better for more people. I think that's an excellent attitude to apply here. No one is saying though who paid more shouldn't have first crack at the lot they want. But there's more then one way to go about that.