Confused by expired rewards

I'm a royal founder from the original kickstarter, but I put the game on the back burner so as to not burn myself out before the game was complete.

Recently, I started playing a bit, and I've thought about upgrading my pledge tier. But holy hell is it confusing. Take, for example, the "Royal Artisan" pledge tier. The teaser says "Play episodes 1-3 and tame an elusive creature." But, when I go into the details, it says that the "episodes 2-3" part of the rewards are expired. Huh?

So, the main selling point of the reward tier isn't actually part of the rewards any longer? If so, why even call that out as the main selling point? Or does that mean anyone who was a backer by the expiration date gets all the rewards that are part of that tier (including expired rewards), but someone just now pledging for the first time wouldn't?

At this point I'm leaning toward just saying forget it and sticking with my original pledge, but maybe someone here on the forums can shed some light.

Thanks!

 

The pledge rewards are quite difficult to pin down to what you got initaly compaired to what you get now due to many reward expirations.

I really do wish they would keep up the main page to refect the expirations better.
Buts its kinda of convoluted in that some royal founder pledges can get some of those items still due to being grandfathered in.

There is a spreadsheet around that tells ya all you need to know.

edit: also pledges are going away eventualy, so prolly why they don't waste the time updating all the info for every tier.

 

Yes it is too confusing. The expiration of certain pledge benefits could have been handled much better. It would be clearer if the expired benefits were at least crossed out. Instead you have to read the fine print to see what is no longer part of the pledge.

 

It's not so confusing. To figure out what rewards you have, you first go like this, spin around. Stop! Double take three times: one, two, three. Theeeen PELVIC THRUST! Whoooo! Whooooooo! Stop on your right foot, DON'T FORGET IT! Now its time to bring it around town. Bring-it-a-round-town. Then you do this, then this, and this, and that, and-this-and-that-and-this-and-that, and then... you have your answer.

 

Lol!!

 

Absolutely. And when they expire what is understandably the main selling point of the tier, but still call it out on the pledges page as the reason to have that tier, I have to wonder if I'm being baited. Any reasonable person would expect that at the least they would get what is called out on the teaser text.

Incidentally, I'm using Royal Artisan in my example because that is the most egregious example of expiring rewards completely changing the reward tier that I found.

 

I don't think it is intentional baiting, although it may seem that way to those who pledged without reading about the conditions. Portalarium did a rush job simply adding the fine print because they have a small team, each member of which is working on stuff important to the game development.

 

I don't think it's intentional either, but it's jarring. Perhaps most importantly, by listing all the expired rewards on the pledge page, it has the psychological effect of highlighting what the backer won't get by upgrading to another tier. And that puts the wrong spin on getting people excited to pledge initially (or upgrade their pledge).

Regardless of what happens, thanks for reading and have an excellent day!

 

I can say I recently upgraded my account. My pledge date was before some expiration dates. So when I upgraded I figured all was good and I would get them. But later on it was explained to me by another player that regardless of my Pledge date, upgrades to the pledge does not go off of the pledge date but instead off of the upgrade date.

*shrugs* It bites but O' well

 

We apologize for the sub-text on the pledge thumbnails not accurately reflecting the still active rewards that are specified on the pledge description text when you open a pledge description. We've now removed all sub-text on the thumbnails. That should help with some of the confusion.

We have a task on our backlog of tasks to try to better display all the rewards you would actually receive for an upgrade based on all the special qualifiers. It is a rather large task and we are trying to determine how to slot it in with other high priority game development tasks. Our apologies for the complexity of sorting it out based on the multiple expiration events that have occurred.

 

I understand it isn't intentionally misleading wording, but it is there just the same. The bigger issue I see here is the value in pledging at this point. Say you get a Citizen Benefactor account at $550. There are no new incentives and the loss of character slots and extra episodes is a big deterent. I figure the actual pledge (deed being $200 and a house being $50 through add on store plus some cosmetic digital items at another $50) being about $300. So I have lost $250 worth of value and the price has not changed. Yet I am lead to believe on the pledge page that I am getting more. It isn't until I go back into lower tier pledges that I see I don't get those rewards.

I really think something needs to be done here. Yes, I can go to the marketplace, but those older accounts are now price inflated. So this means that extra money is not going into the game development. I am sure that is not what the game wants or needs. Why not throw in some other rewards for post expiration accounts or a store credit to make up for the financial loss? I think it is a fair request.

 

yeah I'm a little confused aswell as I am currently knight and was going to jump up to lord but there has been items expire which doesn't really make the jump beneficial unless its based on when you pledged

 

I was quite disappointed when I upgraded to Duke to discover that I had only 1 property deed. I was Edelmann for the longest time and thought, based on the tier descriptions and other posts from Darkstarr, that I would get all the deeds earned up until that point. Property is a huge selling point for a tier so I wish they would revisit their expiration plan.

 

Yes it a big mess. It does completely the opposite of enticing you to upgrade.

 

The biggest problems for me is that I want to upgrade from Royal Ancestor to Citizen but, because a couple of tiers have expired, it is going to cost me almost $500 NZ to do this. I love the game and would really like to make the jump so I can get a better home, but the cost and the loss of some of the rewards makes it hard to do. I understand why Port has had to do this, but also am a bit annoyed that I waited and missed my opportunity. I really wish there was an in-between tier with a better home that I could upgrade to.

 

I have to agree. I wish they would have just expired entire pledge tiers rather than particular parts of tiers. It has made tracking pledge rewards incredible difficult. And it does seem to disencintivise upgrading to particular tiers.

 

Maybe they should just stamp EXPIRED across the existing pledges and insert new pledges with the reduced rewards.

 

Honestly I think them expiring rewards to people who already had the accounts and maybe had wanted to continue up the pledge tree should have still received the rewards. It should have ONLY applied to new pledges. In my eyes that was a bad decision on their part.

 

I could not agree more! So far though I do not see them being flexible on much of anything that would have to do with this, so I think you we hoping without a chance of anything happening.