Explanations on monetization thinking on SotA

It might be overly inflated for the first week. But even then people need to have the money to buy it for it to sell.

But in every game I've played the crafters sell at a loss even just to get more materials to level up their crafting.

You can only sell for an inflated price if there is nobody else who can do what you do. There's no price fixing here. People undercut you by 1 gold or 10 gold right until things are selling for almost free because they crafted 100 sets of gear trying to get to a higher skill level. And presumably the gear created finds it's way into loot tables (I haven't seen this in action).

 

@Chris - I'm not expecting everyone to have the best gear and that it will last forever. But I am expecting that I will be able to make the best gear by being a skilled enough crafter... and not have to rely on lucky dice to do so.

My point was that you guys are saying that "only the most dedicated crafters" are going to be able to make the best gear... and I'm saying that crafting level has little to no impact on being able to make the best gear.

Anyone of any crafting skill level seems to have relatively equal chances of adding masterworks/enchants to the recipe crafted (static stat) items. Adding the RNG stats are what's going to make them powerful and "the best" and a minimal %chance increase of adding those doesn't make it worthwhile to master a crafting profession.

Please, I beg you, make each additional gear improvements 100% chance, but only possible based on achieved skill level and not some random luck thing. I want to know that if I skill up blacksmithing that extra 25 points that it means I am guaranteed to be able to add another stat to my items. Even if that extra stat is a pick from 3 random choices... that would be a huge improvement. I don't want to do it to find that all it gets me is a few extra % chance increase that I won't destroy what I already worked hard to make. If there is even 1% chance to fail and destroy... it will happen to me way too many times to make me hate crafting.

 

You don't want to have to rely on crafters for your repairs, but don't want to work repair skills? I think I'm up to speed.

This is a medieval themed mmo, blacksmiths make blacksmithing repairs and its rediculous to inject a radom p2w item and say crafters dont have the ability to repair items they personally fabricated.

Even more simplistic a fix, make npc armorers able to repair max durability at 250 gold an item with 1 max durability lost per repair.

I don't see why portalarium or the player base wants to make this more difficult than it needs to be. COTO'S have no business in the repair process.

 

You're right, my gut over reaction got the better of me.

 

The very worst part is we would have to spam noble chat and scene chat to find someone.

 

No you aren't up to speed because i didn't say i think COTOS are the solution.

 

This whole process is portalarium saying, "If you want to play our game without constantly grinding materials to recreate your gear, you have to pay us in cash".

Last I checked, I didn't pledge to a cash shop mobile game.

 

This is honestly frustrating because I totally understand that this means guaranteed revenue for portalarium, but I can't accept how it's tied to repairs.

We have a great game here, the money will come as we release new add-ons, as we offer housing tax payments via the add-on store, as we release new home packages etc. We don't have to tie it into the game in a manner that makes players feel obligated to pay so they don't lose their gear at a rate that could change depending on how much Money it's producing.

That's a direct tie between fun and spending. Shouldn't revenue be based on the merit of the game? Shroud is strong enough to handle that.

 

You will be able to repair the items for a fair amount of time with your materials and skills. If you want, you can prolong the life of your item (max durability) applying CotOs with diminishing results until your item finally break. You can collect those CotOs: Paying game-gold to other players, finding them on your adventures, or buying them from Portalarium.

It sound VERY reasonable to me.

 

You shouldn't charge people real money for diminishing rewards. And the new awesome roadmap does confirm the item ability/affinity system is still planned, so diminishing returns on max durability doesn't work.

You can make it expensive and a pain to repair max durability so people will prefer new gear, but you shouldn't force permanent breakage on those willing to pay a premium to keep items in the hopes of unlocking item affinity abilities.

 

I think to answer you correctly there is an issue i am missing, When you apply a CotO, Do you spend the original materials (of the item) and have a equivalent skill requeriment to "reforge it"? or do you simply double click the CotO and then the item to get the max durability boost?

 

The COTO will be one of the ingredients when you do repair at a crafting table if you want max durability to go back up.

 

It works like this, today:

At a crafting station, place the broken/worn/damaged item on the table. Place a repair kit on the table. Place a COTO on the table.
The blue Repair button text will highlight, and you click it. Your item is returned to 100/100 (or max/max, whatever max dur is).

All they've done, at a recipe level, is change the max durability repair recipe from R28 by adding the COTO as an additional component, and it repairs it to 100% no matter what. (skill is not a factor, at all)
EDIT
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The recipe has been changed to:
Place the broken item & the COTO on the table, blue repair button highlights, press repair, voila, guaranteed 100% success rate max/max normal/max durability.

Not mentioned in the patch notes, like oh so many other nerfs and changes.

 

I would "Like" this post as it's a great explanation of the current process... but I DON'T "Like" the current process.

 

~Welcome to Time Lord's New NPC Butler Services~
@Chris (no need to reply, just think about it) @DarkStarr

Our in game Reward Servants don't do squat...
I feel that there could be a way that our Reward Servants (RS) could be given or loaded with COTO and Repair Kits, then perform repair services using these gaming stocks.

We need our COTO to work for us as well as our ~RS~!
What do I need to be doing pounding away on any iron? "I'm a Royal Lord Marshal"... So why can't I just walk into my house, hand my busted up dull crap to my ~RS~ and them have it ready for me in a pickup service window all nice and ready to go again?

Say, "I'm throwing a party", maybe then as a party gift I could then allow my gests to be able to also have my ~RS~ fix their busted up crap as well. All I'm thinking that would be required for me to do, is then set an option to "Party" on my ~RS~ and then anyone who uses his services, then burn up all the COTO and Repair kits I had loaded on him beforehand. "It would make for a good party favor and it would sure insure that my guests were motivated to all show up on time for the event"

At $85 for 100 COTO and whatever in game cost for the repair kits all loaded up on the ~RS~, "we've currently and in our past had events costing far more in prizes" to insure our in game event's success.

I see our Knights and higher pledge members as having the deepest pockets for our game, with a continuing wish to help support our game's further success. I also see them as being the most avid COTO customers when it comes to our Add-On Store purchases.

~Parties & Raising Large Armies~
We've all talked about it, "how to raise large PvP or PvE hunting parties" and our Nobles are those that should have the capacity to raise any large amount of forces and fast. Our COTO and in game repair kits could become that vehicle that encourages those large armies of players to all come together for our grand hunting stomps through filling up our Reward Servants with masses of COTO and in game repair kits.

It's the right thing to do for our game, it's the right thing to do for our Portalarium and it's the right thing to do for our Nobles because they have Reward Servants which should be rewarding for everyone who enjoys following their favorite Nobles on their grander and more costly quests.

In the above described, "our COTO to me, spells party time!"

What large real life party have you ever been to that cost less than $85 bucks?
Wat' U' Tink' Abow' Aw' Dat'?
~Time Lord~

 

First an disclaimer: Chris didn't talk about diminishing returns (my bad, sorry), instead he stated the expectation to increase sequentially the cost to repair items with CotOs. It is different because that way they wouldn't force you to drop the item, instead they discourage you from repair it because of the cost.

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After the good explanations (thanks Agra) i think the expectation Chris has is correct. All items needs to be replaced sometime, and from his calculations Chris expect to have the items on use for months. I am ok with that time length.

If there is on thing i would change from the original post explanation is to require the original ingredients (or some % of them) associated with skill when we use the CotOs, avoiding the repair kits.

 

Mabey a good in between is to make epic gear easier to make, makes it a bit more disposable but still be enchant and gemable. Decient entry level crafting gear that does not last to long but can provide decient short term coverage.

 

Linked is some good info on the current state of repair. It is known that durability repair rates are still undergoing tweaks, so don't freak out, its still early.

I'm posting it here because I think it's pertinent to COTO's and their tie-ins to max durability repair.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ty-decay-rate-isnt-working-as-intended.52414/

 

I didn't see a response to my question about item affinity. So I will expand my question with my area(s) of concern.

This is stated in the Roadmap thread.

Some detail on item affinity is in order. Is only 1 layer of affinity possible? If there can be several layers then this brings concern to the coins and max durability.

Depending on the affinity bonus. The life cycle of an item with many buffs from long term use could become quite a boon to have. Obsidian Crowns sustaining the life of such an item is bad. Pay $ or lose your weapon of many affinities.

On the other side of the issue is I was expecting/hoping for more from affinity. Item affinity is part of the design to keep the naked mage from popping it's ugly head. To keep the players using their better gear. (or that's the way I recall it at least)

If all item affinity is turning out to be is a title and a small buff. 1: Won't keep people using their better gear. 2: Has little character development 3: Might as well allow full loot since gear will devolve into wearing what's economical and available.

I'm not one to cry P2W but item affinity + Obsidian Crowns could definitely go in that direction. While at the same time I really like item affinity and what functions it can bring to the overall design.

 

@Chris:

I think that the hours formula you used is incorrect or flawed by a lot. Let me explain.

Looking at your 135 Bear hours I was wondering how you came up with the maximum durability loss. The only way I was able to come up with a system that matched your 135 Bear hours was to have maximum durability decline at 10 each time the durability got to 0. This I believe is unrealistic for players to expect to happen. The reason for this being what happens if you're in the middle of a fight in the item breaks then you have no armor or weapon. The other reasonably this is unrealistic is I see a weapon/armor being unrepairable if you let its durability get to 0. This to me is weapon or armor breakage and is what a player should strive to not let happen.

When I first read your post I thought that maximum durability loss was 10% of durability loss so I came up with this as how to figure out durability loss and maximum usage.

Lets take a 100 durability as the starting point. Now if we use it down to 0 than the max durability goes down 10% of the durability used. See you could repair it up to 90 durability. So the 2nd time you wear it down to 0 maximum durability should only be at 81. Then the next time the durability would go down 72. But this is unreasonable as I pointed out prior you could lose your armor in the middle of a battle or at the start of the battle. So I created my spreadsheet and used a 10% formula of durability loss is max durability loss and had the formula use down to a 20 durability then repair. After 7 repair cycles with my system you have 119.25 Bear hours. Again I did not take it down to 0 as I believe at 0 a weapon or item should break and be nonrepairable.

So can you tell us if maximum durability loss is a set rate each repair or is it a percentile of the durability loss?

Edit: In this post I'm refering to maximum durability loss as the current maximum not the maximum when using a crown.