Gold Crowns of the Obsidians

The gold that will be offered offered by NPCs for COTOs will be equivalent to the loot you can grab from a single elf. I don't think it will be a problem, as any sane person would sell it to other players instead. They will pay much more - and that's OK because it's not inflationary.

 

Yeah, I agree with Womby on this. Selling the items to the players would be not much different from selling pledge rewards or other add-on items to other people in game.

Plus also the in-game lot deed may not be purchasable through vendors in the future. At least they have two months to make assessments, so anything could happen at this point.

 

With a repair kit, I can see the need for something like ore and animal hides in repairing things. I'm not suggesting an all inclusive solution, however if we were to say toss in a COTO coin into the repair kit, now that sounds odd..

What I was thinking is instead of calling it a coin, that we give it a name that makes more sense. Grease was something I thought of from working on cars with my Dad as a youth. It could be anything that makes sense in repairing durability for whatever product we're discussing. Whether it's armor, weapons, clothing. Anything.

A recipe with a coin just sounds too weird. And I 'think' that's a part of the issue. Yes I know, it also means potentially more money spent. Believe me, I've spent a pretty penny more for this game than ANY game in my life so I'm right there with you guys.

I was hoping for feedback on whether changing the name/character to something else might make more sense and thus more palatable for players. And yes, this was something discussed back when. Now that it's getting real. I'm hoping to find some way to make it sound better.

It's also been suggested modifying durability so things last a little longer (at least I think I read that somewhere). Might help people accept this change a little better.

 

Sorry, no link, but my memory tells me that they have stated this more than once. They never stated explicitly whether they would go for a lottery or an auction, but they mentioned both as possibilities, and more recently a lottery was again mentioned. They have always said they wanted to have close control of the rate of distribution of in-game purchased lot deeds, and that was their suggested way of doing it. I think you can safely assume that you will not be able to simply purchase a lot deed directly from an NPC.

 

How these will be priced in-game in an active economy is all speculation at this point. It's all up in the air based on what Chris said earlier in this thread. Gold Crowns will be sold in the add-on store at a set price and those sales will not impact in-game drops or pricing. The price of Gold Crowns in-game will be determined by the player economy - and their valuation is yet to be determined but it's fair to expect they'll be expensive.

As for sales between players in-game vrs sales to NPC vendors... won't player to player sales also impact the economy? Every Gold Crown purchased from the store will have an impact on the economy once injected - perhaps if there's a hard cap put on inflation property deeds can maintain their value (based on full add-on store prices). If crown value is high... things are going to be very very very very very VERY interesting.

 

If a COTO is sold to an NPC for gold, that gold is created on the spot and injected into the economy. That's inflationary. If a COTO is sold to a player for much more gold that simply results in the transfer of gold from one player to another. The total amount of gold in the game is not increased, so it is not inflationary. That's why the price offered by NPCs for COTOs will be set at a discouragingly low value, equivalent to the loot drop from a single elf.

EDIT: This only holds true as long as there are severe limits on what you can buy directly with COTOs.

 

These may have been suggested in previous postings but,

IF:

1. COTOs are not sellable for in-game gold, only to be claimed for COTO-only items/benefits.
2. COTO-only items are not player tradeable (can't move them out from inventory, either use it or destroy it).
3. COTO-only items/benefits are restricted from combat related buffs.

Some concerns may be addressed, as:

1. It does not encourage getting in-game gold with real money.
2. No COTO farmers ruining the economy if COTO (and COTO-only items) are not player tradeable.
3. Somewhat addressed the concern on repair to max, as it depends on the cost to make those crafts, damage rate and COTO drop rate.

 

Dear Starr,
Let me allow to speak straight forward. I am a Backer from nearly the first day of the Kickstarter campaign and i've invested around 800 USD in this game and supported Portalarium and all the other backer to get their dream realized.
But with the introduction of COTO's and your additional monetization strategy of bring pay to win into the game, you made me really angry and pissed off. To say in general that i hate ingame shops, but i' ve accepted that silently only for beautification reasons. But now you are really going to influence the game and its properties once i am able to buy the currency with real money. I hate that!!!!! I did NOT backed the game to get a f2p game with an ingame shop!!!!!
I formerly backed a successor of the Ultima series and now i am getting such a game wich an ingame shop with functions where you going to lose me over time. I am very angry about that i've invested so much money. Afterwards i won't do it again. Thats my learning.i did not back you for building an ingame shop and selling ingame currency and other services for real money. There was no word about it during the Kickstarter campaign!!!! I never would had invest so much money to pay for a game which distributes at the end ingame currency for real money. Mannnn. I hate this!!!! You are going to lose me...... Maybe a lot are now saying i don't care, but i am confident a lot others think the same. That's the point were you and the game are going to lose trust and confidence and finally this is a death to immersion.

 

Struth mate, that's a pretty UnAustralian thing to say!

10 Terrifying Facts About The Australian Dropbear

But seriously, I think this thread is already inundated enough with exaggerations and hyperbole. I don't think this premium currency is any more P2W than tax free lots from pledges. Why on earth would this now become the last straw for some people is beyond me. I think that Portalarium has and will continue to make positive decisions in the best interests of the game that we are here to support. I'll leave the details to what has already been calmly explained by Chris. As Baron Drocis and others have pointed out, time is money, and I'd rather spend my time enjoying the game when I can without getting burned out powergaming or trying to keep up with the Joneses.

For the record I will be supporting the crafters in my area as much as I can. I will repair my gear when I can but when it breaks I will be buying player made gear to replace it. If you want a steady income, set up a light armor/archery stall somewhere near Rift's End and I will likely be a regular customer.

edit: If people cannot afford to replace broken gear with newly player crafted items, what on earth are they spending their earned gold on anyway?

 

I cannot accept this statement: Time is money. I paid based on the Kickstarter event and NOT based on the decision close to release to change the payment model!!! I feel deceived to be clearly and open. Since, the first release items has been offered to sell for real money. As i wrote i silently accepted this. But it must be a difference to talk about items only for beatification reasons or for a housing slot, or to influence game design and its impact. Paying real money to get the max durability of items fixed is an influence of my playstyle. Balanced or not, it has been implemented.
I spend more than enough money and i am not willed to be the cow to milk more and more and i don't want to have ingame limitations that telling me, oh you can earn in premium ingame currency but those are not so easily to earn, because we want to generate real money. That design decision to generate money should have been communicated very early..and again i am confident i would have never backed SotA once i had the knowledge about those plans. I'll like to earn this crowns easily as a casual gamer and not only be enabled to get those as a power gamer or in a group. And those shouldn't also be limited only with the sense to generate real money.

I make a suggestion: Transfer to my account every month a certain amount of crowns to get my already invested real money compensated with the premium crowns. Put it to my ingame bank. A share based on my pledge tier. That's a way i could expect this, but i don't hope Portalarium is now going to SPAM my inbox with currency offers and special prices. A always hate this also in other F2P/P2W games.

Just saw this offering : https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=9085 including now Cold Crowns in a bundle. Are you kidding me? I have a Knight pledge. How many do i receive?

 

Welcome to P2W.

It doesn't matter wether the stupid Gold Crown gives you 2.500 Gold or just 250 Gold, it is still P2W.

Enough said...

 

I'm not going to discuss the repair method with the coins I'm going to talk about the other buffs that these coins can be used to buy.


What people don't see wrong with these buffs:

It Doesn't Affect Combat

who says that combat is the only part of this game that needs balancing?

Who says that combat is the only part of this game that needs to be balanced. You talking about a player driven economy and then creating buffs that help remove the player driven economy. By that I mean you're giving offs that reduce damage/durability loss for real world money. These are not temporary in the normal sense of in game terms these will last for 7 days. Also you can have multiple buffs running the same time so now you have reduced durability loss, less regents need and you can carry more weight. What this will lead to is gold farmers using these buffs all the time. This will allow them to create characters that go out into battle have less repair costs less region costs and can carryback more items from a single run. Your destroying the player-based economy by giving people a method to reduce their need of that player-based economy. A 25% reduction in durability loss means that they have to buy less repair kits. Those repair kits would be made by the player-based economy those are not going to be bought now. The regents if this person does not form their own regents they will buy 25% less regents. Again this affects the player run economy. With them being able to carry more weight they will be able to take more loot that would otherwise disappear and use it for resources or to sell to vendors. This gives a very unfair economical advantage to people paying real life money for in game bonuses. And this is just for the combat side. On the crafting/gathering side being able to carry more items is a huge boost when going out resource gathering because that means you have to make less trips which means less time gathering more time crafting.


The idea that a lot of us were sold on was that there would be no item shop with game mechanics involved in it. That means no buffs, no bonuses, no stat increases. This goes against everything that you have stated when you pitch this game idea.


You also did this not out in the open like you said you would do game development ideas. This was thrown in there in an effort to make money. Chris has said that you guys are open to other ideas on ways to make money. The backlash you have seen is that you are breaking your original promises you are giving players a way of bypassing game mechanics in order to facilitate your poor planning. We are now nearly 2 years behind when scheduled delivery was to have happened. So this means you should of been close to issuing episode 3. You have not reached out to the community in a method that would say we need your help on ideas to help fund the. Some of us have spent well over 5 years worth of “subscription” fees backing this game. Yes we have some items that other people cannot get but we were told that there would be no subscriptions and no items that would affect gameplay. You could have asked the community if they would be willing to do a subscription style similar to Star Citizen. For $10 a month we would get a hat of the month and a form section to allow us to ask questions to Lord British and select 1 out of 4 options for a in-depth dive of something like economy or combat. But instead you decide to go the item shop route and have caused an economical imbalance in the game. While some people have stated that they don't run around and do things based off of the spreadsheet, that's good for them that they do not play that way. Some people like to be on equal footing with everyone else who has paid for the game and not have those with money to spend allowing them to gets advantages that other people do not get.

@RichardGarriott @DarkStarr @Chris

 

<gone...>

 

35 for knight pledge

 

Good idea...Got to keep the need for a crafting economy.

 

So you get ~$35 worth of COTO from $800 pledge? As a duke with $5300, you get ~$90 worth of COTO. That's hardly anything.. To make it fair, those who already "prepaid" via the pledges, should receive more than that in form of recurring rewards. Just think of LOTRO founder account getting lifetime subscription with it and they cost much less than many our pledges.

Right now the effect of COTO is still barely considered to be P2W like some other games. However, how can we be sure that we're not gonna run into the case like some other F2P game where your game feature got limited unless you subscribe? What happen to the "prepaid" concept we bought into now?

 

@RichardGarriott @DarkStarr @Chris

I love the idea of the gold crowns of obsidians. Great idea as I now can repair my broken armour and trade for gold.

Thank you from those who gets their butt kicked in combat yet, like me. Now we have a chance.

 

People freak out becouse developers broke their promises.

I agree that grinding is already present (unfortunately many people like it), but crowns cxhagerate things to the whole new level. To sucessfuly participate in PVP one has spend long hours grinding for equipment maintenance or pay real money for things that shouldn't be there in the first place.

As a casual player I want to spend my time on actual playing, not on maintenancing skills or equipment that I have.

For me It's not about quantinty, but quality of free time spent on gaming, and I am willing to pay for that.

 

That's assuming that Portalarium doesn't monitor or include player vendors and public vendors for player to player transactions in our overall economic picture. If pricing is set based on an aggregate of all transactions - the economy will be more reflective of something player run. That's where the rub comes from when looking at the add-on store for evaluating the potential of a Gold Crown as a direct path to in-game currency.

If the player economy drives the price of crowns through the roof in-game - we'll have ourselves potential for a perfect path to circumvent a grind for anything in-game at an outrageous discount when players buy real dollar crowns through the add-on store... all the while maintaining a healthy in-game economy.

Good for in-game economics - bad for anyone that spent real dollars on anything in the store.

 

- horrible reviews on steam (especially the newer ones)
- the basics of this game are not ready and not really enjoyable (fight, crafting, economy)

and now you bring us a premium-currency for real money...
this makes me sad :-(


but I remain loyal to you