Player Driven Economy - Portalarium's huge oversight?

Persistence is not launch.. it never was. Calling it launch won't change that. Also, SotA isn't exclusive to Steam.

 

Off Topic.
The only difference is the amount of marketing done before, and what they are obligated to deliver.
Disregarding legal lawyer speak. the game has launched, the world is persistant, you can spend real money, and there are no more wipes.

The reference to Steam, is just a place to get "numbers" because Steam is one of the few places you can "witness" the launches of many games, and see patterns.
In general, Steam numbers are like polling numbers, polls don't directly get the opinion of everyone in the country, the get a sample.
Same thing with games, Steam numbers don't represent 100% of a game sales, but a potion, and the outside of steam, and inside steam actual sales usually mirror each other in proportion.

Back to the topic at hand.
I think the only way they are going to be able to make a viable player economy is if they reign in skill points with something other than decay.
UO did this with a 700+ skill point cap.
I think Skill points in a tree collection (E.g. Producer or Adventure) should have an xp cost based on the total number of points in the entire collection.

E.g. The exp curve should be flattened, but for every 100 total points of skill the xp cost for every skill in that family the xp point cost should double.
This would remove the Master of all things crafting,
E.g. getting a single skill to 200 would be relatively easy if no other skills were raised, getting a second skill to 200, would be painful, getting a third would take serious dedication, getting a 4th would be epic.
getting getting 2 skills to 100 would be realively easy, 4 skills to 100 would be painful, 6 to 100 would take dedication, 8 to 100 would be epic.

Basically I should be able to be the best Miner ever, but crappy at everything else, or a decent mining + blacksmith, or fair at all the gathering skills.

But the world is already persistant, the game is already launched and they no longer really have the freedom to make these kinds of sweeping changes.

 

I wrote to dallas about what I was calling the "beauty selection bias". If you pay money your lot/avatar can look beautiful. If you don't, you're forced to live in a pretty bland state. The PM was ignored. Port knows about this and simply can't do much about it because it's how they pay the bills. Hopefully it doesn't affect player retention.

 

Game isn't launched until EP1 is DONE.. by definition that means officially out of beta. As it is we're still technically in a pre-alpha state (by Portalarium's definitions.. Alpha = feature complete.. Beta = Content complete). Early Access is still early access is still pre-launch. We don't get to decide otherwise just because it suits the way we want to think of it. All you're going to do is spread confusion and misinformation to those who don't know. You want to say 'may as well have launched' fine.. but it's not actually launched.

 

For all intents and purposes it has launched. It may not be finished but the world is persistent, it's retailing at full price on steam, and the add-on store has been in operation for years now. The land rush has happened, the house lots are already being sold/raffled off, and the economy is already forming ingame.

I mean you can stick to the "we haven't launched" belief because Portalarium SAYS we haven't, but whatever arbitrary date they choose to finally declare launch it won't feel like one to any new players we get. They'll be logging in to a "launch" where all the land has already been sold, the economy has already been established, and most people have already done the storyline.

 

You could argue that the time it took to create those could have been spent making items that are craftable, or (if they decided to implement it, which they could if they modeled less add-on store items) modifying existing items to have more options/look better if you craft an exceptional item.

 

Hey, if people STOP buying add on stuff, they will have to start working on the original content and the basic game mechanics. Imagine that o.0

THE HENDOMAN

 

1. If things slow, they'll schedule a telethon and convince us to spend $5 to get the drive bonuses, which they'll then have to create.
2. If they force crafter to 'buy' enhanced items to sell, I walk away. That would be total BS. People already buy things on the store in order to flip them for game gold.

 

I sincerely hope this is this case. However, there is no proof that this is actually the case. Portalarium has not, to my knowledge, said "hey don't worry about the fact that the crafted items are crappy, you will eventually be able to craft the nicest furniture available in game."

In fact, I am willing to bet that this will NOT be the case, because they depend too much on the extra revenue. It does seem at this point that the decision to make the add-on store items nicer than anything you can or will ever be able to craft was both intentional and tactical. They want you to buy the nice stuff from them:

I do seem to remember Lord British himself stating in the early years that all the best items in the world would be crafted by players... alas, that too has fallen by the wayside.

Unfortunately, as the OP has so elegantly pointed out, this is leading to the nearly inevitable crash and burn of the entire basis of their multiplayer world, the player run economy.

You can't have a true player run economy without players being able to craft and sell the most desirable items. Who is going to buy my exquisitely crafted crappy plain chair when they can purchase an awesome fancy one in the add-on store?

Especially now that you can buy add on store items with in game gold?

 

Carpenters can't even craft the nice bookcase that is already in the game, probably because Port prefer to use it as a gold sink.

 

1. I'm thinking long term, post-real release when you can't as easily beg for money without losing players that see that as a sign the company is going under.
2. It works for most of the other persistent multiplayer games these days, Portalarium will stumble over it eventually.

 

I think Wurm Online has the better funding model for high end crafters because their store refuses to sell decorations for this very reason that high end crafters can exist. That game only sells game coins on the store, the economy is controlled because that is the only coin faucet, every coin in the game was purchased for money. If you want to buy a fancy chair, the only way to do it is from a crafting player with coin that you or another player payed cash for. Essentially it is also a subscription because coins are used to keep your premium skills and land deeds active, but it is possible to become a master crafter or their serf and grind your way to coins without paying cash.

I have not heard any announcements that SOTA devs intend to change the decorative collectibles funding model that clearly is working. So arguing that this is early access and can change, sure anything is possible, but the devs have given no indication they are interested in replacing it with another funding model. Even kickstarter uses the decorative collectible funding model. Even once the game is released they intend to use that model to fund ep2. They will continue with the telethons to keep adding new decorative content to the game in-between, because the whales are here to compete at collecting the most content.

If you doubt that this is the funding model of the game, go look at Portalariums prior game, which was specifically about paying money for digital collectables. Go back and look at UO where this trend started of players selling virtual real estate and goods, Portalarium has just made themselves the primary seller of the best houses and goods so that they can have a monopoly on that sale, they do not want to compete with their players for that sell.

With COTO they do have the possibility to switch to the WURM online funding model, and make that the sole currency. They did introduce it because store sales was lagging. But based on the negative perception it has compared to buying cosmetic decorations, and how amazingly successful each telethon is - I doubt they will make that the exclusive funding. But if high end crafters are to exist, they have to clear out the store, which means they now have little financial incentive to create new content. (In Wurm Online this only occurs when the devs realize it after bleeding for years of lost players, took them a decade to realize roleplayers even want to sit on chairs!) Does anyone think they would have added chimneys solely to increase the immersion of the crafters and roleplayers? Or do chimneys exist because the store exists?

 

I get where people are coming from but it's not the same thing. Almost nothing is balanced.. the economy is barely gotten started and has a LOONG way to go.. if they go multi-tier currency then the entire economy (what little of it there is) will completely reset as people figure out what everything is really going to be worth.. right now people have no idea what the value of things will be 3 releases from now.. never mind at launch..

The base skills aren't all in.. many areas of the map are still clones..

Launch does NOT mean everything and everyone is coming into a fresh game. People assume that only because that's what they're used to. SotA however does not fit the 'norm' on these things and we shouldn't think of it as if it does. Launch means the game is officially done and is ready not for early access testing.. but for the public.. What we are agreeing to do in Early Access is test.. having the benefits of persistence is simply one of the many perks.

 

Taking Richard's statements in context.. he was talking about stats.. not aesthetics.

 

When you are talking about an entire player run economy which is very heavily supported by crafters, aesthetics ARE stats. A crafter is useless unless someone wants to buy his wares.

 

I'm going to quote myself from another thread here:

 

You do not have free license to put words in someone's mouth when you know they meant something else. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment here but usually when devs are talking 'the best stuff' they're not talking furniture and I'm pretty sure you know that.

That being said and at the risk of repeating myself since no one seems to be listening.. *I* seem to remember Starr not too long ago stating they plan to have content that DOESN'T have a better versions in the store.. eventually.

 

You seem to be missing my point. Furniture is one of the basic staples for crafting carpenters. If a crafter can't sell things he makes, who wants to be a crafter?

 

All of that is still testing and providing feedback. This is what we all signed up for if you'll recall.

 

Yea, its true; much of the game design is based on the idea that decoration isn't "real gameplay", but only a vanity feature, so this justifies the way the add-on store is done. Which is unfortunate though for the role-playing side of the game, imo, because it would be a fun part of the game from an rp perspective to rely on master carpenters, blacksmiths, farmers, etc. who are using rare sourced materials to make great deco for players.