How do you feel about referral/challenge rewards?

I'm not excited at the prospect of becoming a SotA Amway distributor, thanks.

 

More players = more fodder = win.

 

Generally I see this pyramid system "more followers you bring in - the higher your rank in the sect" as a desperate step by a failing organization. So I'm quite disappointed at Portalarium with their pyramid scheme challenge.

 

There are some very dedicated and enthusiastic supporters here. Not all of them have a pocket full of cash to spend on this game. I fully support various ways for these members to be rewarded. Bringing in new members is a great value to Portalarium and to all of us.

BTW, Aos_Si, if this is a pyramid scheme then it's a mighty flat pyramid. You do a real disservice to Portalarium and the folks working there when you associate them with a illegal and fraudulent marketing scheme.

 

Problem with that isn't the fact they are giving away a couple of levels, its more the lower level stuff like the emote which is concerning and annoying. Those of us involved in kickstarter did everything we could to get our friends and family involved at that stage to get the project up and to get ALL of us the stretch goals and so all of our friends who might be interested are already supporters. In my case as I said before I already bought my partner an account as well as buying my own. Then this comes along latter and unlike the early backers stuff we are effectively locked out of it because if our friends were likely to do it they already did it.

 

So post it on your FB and hope that your friends who didn't join up take another look at it.

Seriously, no one is twisting anyone's arm to do this. It's simply a new incentive to help bring in more people. Don't want to tell friends about it? Then don't. It's really that simple. What's disappointing to me is how entitled some people can act.

 

Early supporters have already been rewarded with items and lower prices. Do you wish to withhold further rewards to those coming a bit later to the game? It is still quite early in development and new supporters are showing no less faith than the rest of us early adopters. Personally, I feel amply rewarded for my Kickstarter support and will not begrudge others some unique rewards for their efforts. For anyone wanting that little extra it shouldn't be too hard to encourage one new person before May, 2014.

 

Did you ever make a major purchase, and then a couple of months later there's a half-off sale? That's how I feel right now. Is that wrong?
So, I'm going to put some effort into recruiting people, although I'm in the same boat as others here that have already made the rounds with my friends. Everybody I know that is likely to be interested has already pledged or not pledged. If I win, I'm looking at Lord of the Manor. *sigh*

The Scene Creation Jam doesn't bother me at all. I will have to think about what the difference is.

 

@Mugly Wumple: Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that they are trying to pull something illegal here, on the contrary I'm quite certain that they don't. The title of the topic asks how we feel about the challenge, and that's how I feel about it and what it reminded me when I first saw it.

As for doing disservice to Portalarium, I'm sure they have weighed all pros and cons before announcing the challenge, and they new pretty well how some people may perceive it.

P.S. Now I see that the topic is mostly about the new unique rewards - this part doesn't bother me in the least.

 

I like the referral challenge but I am also big on SOTA getting more funds. I wish, however, that you did not have to use your email and could use your forum name or something. I am protective of my email addresses, and those that know me or are close to me have already been pestered about pledging. So my only option is to try posting on some of my old NWN communities, which I will, but I would prefer to not have to give my email address to get the referral.

 

@Sargon

As a high level tier supporter myself, I understand where you are coming from. However, they are really only giving away two high end rewards (two Dukes), so it is certainly limited and should not shift balance too much.

I'm for it overall, if it encourages people to go out and recruit their friends, at basically 50$ a pop it really adds up in Portalarium's coffers.

It is also a good way for someone who is a dedicated fan and supporter, but cannot feasibly afford a mid level tier (citizen/knight) to climb their way up to a house at launch by either winning it or gaining enough of the 25$ pledge bonuses. It's a nice option.

I think having fans create assets also frees up the dev team to work on other stuff, and instead of having to pay for these assets, they are giving away in game stuff (among other things I guess) so really it is making SotA stronger from every way you look at it.

We need to rise above the urge to only support things that benefit us directly, but see what will make this game more successful as a whole.

 

My main problem with this approach isn't that its shorting players who already brought all their friends to the table (not that this isn't unfortunate, but we early backers already get our own toys, not to mention that putting a fix on this would be too exploitable). Rather, I dislike the competitive nature of this system. Much like the unofficial music contest, this system pits people against each other for the reward, making collaboration (one of our greatest community assets) difficult, if not impossible. I don't have any friends who play MMOs nowadays, so allow me to relate this to music composition: I wouldn't even be able to submit my music for SotA if I was unable to collaborate with mixers and sound techs (keep an eye peeled for new submissions today...). Still, its good that we're being encouraged to bring players in, at any rate.

 

@Sir Frank KC
Wow man, you are comparing a pet dog and emote to a half off sale? If that is half the value of your pledge, how little could you have possibly pledged? lol.

@Mordecai
You can collaborate for the contests. It said that the top prizes are splittable if you wish among the team that wins.
Nevertheless, competition is the best thing that could happen. It is a catalyst for innovation and pushing oneself beyond what one thought is possible.


@no one in particular
This is good for Portalarium and the end product. We should all support this and do our best to recruit more (or don't, like Mystic said, no one is twisting your arm). Let go of entitlement and selfishness and lets do what we can. And if you choose not to, please don't demonize those that do.

 

You are correct, but (and not to negate your correctness) my team of people would still be working against everyone else, making large-scale, multiple fan site-coordination unlikely. I do agree that most criticism over this competition comes from a feeling of diminished pledge value, which is a selfish (but understandable) motive, but consideration and comments on the matter may still have their merits.

 

If these scene jams are what I suspect they are, then you wouldn't want lots of people working on them. Too many cooks, etc.

Here's something to remember... Portalarium makes the contest rules. If there is more than just one entry that is fantastic I think it's likely that they create co-winners. It would be a crime to let great content rot.

But for large-scale coordination, you're probably talking about recruitment. I suppose it's true that you can't work together, but I'm not actually sure what great advantage a large scale cooperation would have over just single-site efforts anyway. In both cases it's multiple sites talking about SotA.

 

*chuckle* No. I don't care about the dog or the emote at all. The Duke benefits that matter to me are the city plot, the island castle, access to the dev team, and that in one of Richard's videos he said if we joined them at the Duke level, they'd do something special for us, like weaving our story into the game (although, I don't see this happening).

If the winning recruiter brings dozens of people into the game, then I'll feel a lot better about that reward. However, if somebody games the system, or takes that prize with only 10 or 12 recruits, then I will feel I got less value by paying full price. I looked at my $750 pledge as supporting the idea. But I look at $5000 as a major purchase of a product or service. I don't really mind if somebody gets a better deal than me, but if they give Duke to somebody for very little real contribution, I'm going to feel very foolish.

I think the Amway comments are unfair, and so are the entitlement comments.
I don't need a contest to get me to try to interest my friends in the game. I don't think anybody else here does either. I think we've all done that already.
This contest is probably intended to appeal to people that aren't already involved. So that Duke slot will either go to somebody that doesn't really care about the game, but was drawn in by the seemingly big prize, or it will be won by some current backer that is willing to put in a little more money and make a bunch of puppet people.

However, it also gives me a shot at Lord of the Manor, that I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.
I'm not real positive about my chances, though, because I mostly don't like approaching strangers, especially for money.

 

It would bother me less if they said that anyone who gets over 100 (or a similarly high number) recruits gets a duke level upgrade. But like Sir Frank said, this could mean that someone who creates 10 random accounts gets to be a duke for 1/10th of the original price. Hmm, I just had an idea....

 

Yep, I also don't like giving out my e-mail address.. especially since I mainly advertise this game on other forums, If I can tell them just put Mishri in as who referred you then I'd probably be much more interested in advertising this as much as possible, so I don't have to give strangers my e-mail address.

I also already referred a Lord and Knight level pledge during kickstarter... I'm assuming the duke is going to go to someone that refers over 100 people, this lasts for 9 months after all, if you can get 10 a month in you are doing well. Markee Dragon or someone with active followers interested in gaming will likely be the one to come out on top.

For the dungeon design thing I think that is awesome. just getting a knight level pledge added to my existing would be cool(bumping me to lord). I'm going to dedicate some time to unity so I'm feeling confident when the contest comes out. It's a great way to reward good content that can be used in the game. Since it doesn't really cost much.

 

It's October 31, 2013 for the contest.

 

Oh wow, I guess I missed that.. I thought it was running through May 2014... Yeah that doesn't give much time for recruitment. I'm really curious to see if they institute a minimum # of referrals or $$'s of pledges in order to earn the duke. I just can't imagine getting too many people that quickly.