I absolutely agree with Richard Garriott, what happened?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Asari, Feb 16, 2019.

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  1. Asari

    Asari Avatar

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    Richard Garriott gets it, he knows what's up. He is a game design legend for a reason.

    I seriously can not stress just how much I agree with what Richard 'Lord British' Garriott said here in one of the interviews leading up to the SotA Kickstarter:

    Direct quote Lord British:

    "The part that is not good for players but has been good for companies is how to squeeze money out of free to play and that's the part we are avoiding like the plague.

    And so it is actually good monetization strategy to take a free to play game and fill it with tons of microtransactions and then tons of ways to leverage you to try to convince you to either making microtransaction or spam all of your friends to make them buy microtransactions.

    And while that has proven to be a very successful business model I'm not sure it makes for very good games and since we're trying to create a gamer's game we're going to avoid that monetization strategy."



    with timestamp - if it won't work, it's at 16:40



    I can't add anything to what he said. He hit the nail on the head and I absolutely agree with him. Thought processes like those are exactly why I admire him as a game designer and why I loved all his games. He GETs it!

    What happened? Why did the "plague", to quote Lord British, win?
     
  2. Sir Frank

    Sir Frank Master of the Mint

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    The original plan failed.
    Portalarium must now do anything they can to survive.
     
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  3. Weins201

    Weins201 Avatar

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    :pLoL
     
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  4. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    Times change.
     
  5. Admiralloyd

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    What happen, money change ppls. But no reason for afraid this "New Shop" "Buff 1d = 1 crown" this is no P2W.
    You cant bought item with 100\100\100 str dex int for killing everything. No crown can make you win in PvE \ PvP

    The problem is that they give us not very high-quality items...... if ppls not see good item, for use we ask question what the? why i need make microtransactions ?!?
     
  6. Black Tortoise

    Black Tortoise Avatar

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    Its not ptw and your success in the game isnt tied to how you spend in the store. How cool your house looks might be, though.

    Also:

     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
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  7. Turk Key

    Turk Key Avatar

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    History is rife with economic theory doomed to failure. Though not always, sometimes there is recovery as the light bulb sparks to life just in time.
     
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  8. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    A new member, welcome to Shroud @Asari!
     
  9. Floors

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    Since you are new, you don't know that this game has struggled to get to this point with people actively hoping the game fails because it didn't live up to what they wanted.

    If you want to get sucked into that black hole from the beginning, you can, but I would advise you to avoid it, it's not a good place to go, for you, for us, or for the game.

    Fundamentally if you're a good gamer, no amount of crowns will make you good in this game anyway.
     
  10. Gravidy

    Gravidy Avatar

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    Quite a few free-to-play games emphasize the micro-transaction front and center, at every possible opportunity. You want to accept this quest? Sure, pay a crown. You want to loot this boss? Sure, pay a crown. You want to enter this zone? Sure, pay a crown. I believe that's the kind of experience LB is talking about here.

    While SotA certainly has it's share of possible micro-transactions available, it isn't constantly putting it in front of your gameplay, and motivating you to spend crowns. While I've given Portalarium lots of money over the years, I spent exactly 1 crown in-game, and that was yesterday to repair my weapon. That's $1 worth of micro-transactions, in 2.5 years of persistence.

    When you look at the games that take micro-transactions to the extreme, SotA doesn't even compare.

    You could make the case that my perspective is biased, since I have given Portalarium quit a bit of money, and have the in-game rewards to benefit from. However, I have friends that have recently gotten into the game in the last couple months, and I wouldn't be surprised if they don't even know what a crown is. They certainly haven't bought any.
     
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  11. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Couple of points -
    • Premium currency is -tradeable- and (almost) everything you buy with it is tradeable, save a few pledge-era titles or emotes (many of which can be taught), its all tradeable. Which means it is possible, if you play the game long enough, to afford everything via in-game means. If paying cash was the only way to achieve things, I would be hollering about pay to win right alongside you. But it isn't. I've amassed an impressive amount of "stuff" (including several tax free properties) through in-game means.
    • Almost everything in the store is entirely cosmetic. A few exceptions are CF vendors, bank devices, and expert crafting stations, none of which are recurring purchases but rather permanent things you can buy and place, use, sell, trade, etc. The prices of these has come down significantly since pledge-days (which has upset a lot of people who do the RMT thing). And you can buy this stuff from other players for gold/crowns too.
    • Some of the most accomplished players I know are those who have spent next to nothing but who have worked for everything in-game.


    The shop buff thing? I'm with you. It was pretty stupid, and it wont be there forever. It would have made more sense to have a little window popup the first time you logged in, saying, hey, we have a store here, click on this and get your free daily buff (and while you're there, maybe buy something). Have an option to "never show me this again." Problem solved. Everyone knows about shop. Offering a FREE daily buff is a way to get a large qty of people to click on that shop every day and it gives opportunity to show featured items/deals whatever. Giving a buff for buying something does nothing to raise awareness, the stated point of the whole buff implementation - it simply rewards spending money. I think it was a shortsighted addition but it wont be here forever.
     
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  12. majoria70

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    No maybe not pop up but just kind of shine a few seconds in the upper corner. ;) Any pop-ups like that would be criticized for ever.
     
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  13. kaeshiva

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    If it was one time only and you could click to disable it, I don't see that being a huge crisis. Except for the people who just love things to complain about, of course ;) But yeah, whatever. Make the crown button glow if you have free stuff to claim. That's a carrot to draw people in. Rewarding people for buying a) doesnt help raise awareness of the shop and b) causes this whole P2w argument.
     
  14. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    Having listened to the included interview, I posit that Shroud of the Avatar is still honoring this statement...

    In the games that he's referencing ... the "Social" games, to use his vernacular ... it is relatively easy to advance in the beginning without spending money. However that ease quickly disappears, and the amount of 'grind' required to keep advancing at a reasonable rate Rapidly increases if you don't spend money on the game to ease the burden of advancement.

    This model doesn't exist in Shroud of the Avatar.

    While there are microtransaction in the game, and those microtransactions are now the sole source of income for the game to pay the staff, and continue development, and simply keep the light on, None of the items that are sold are Required to advance, or even significantly ease the (already low) labor required to advance in the game. The items are, in by far the greatest majority, simply appearance items. Of course there are a few that can in some small degree ease the burden of advancement (Obsidian Potions, Prosperity Tools), but the benefits of these is Minor and has no significant effect on a player's rate of advancement either in Adventurer Level or toward the completion of the story line. The recent "Quality of Life" changes to the game have done far more to ease the burden of advancement that Any item ever sold in the Crown Shop.

    Ultimately, Shroud of the Avatar is a Business... A Business must be able to make money... The Crown Shop is how this business has come to meet that requirement.

    If I had my druthers, there would be a simple monthly subscription, but, for reasons that have always been a mystery to me, that business model has become an anathema in the gaming industry.
     
  15. Armeleon Vesaz

    Armeleon Vesaz Avatar

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    This conversations is not likely to end with people agreeing because we're talking about matters of degree here. Still my 2 cents: My personal is experience is that the above quote is not at all true to SotA today. So I don't like all the monetization in the game but I'd also say that as a matter of degree the monetization is still OK and does not negatively affect my experience in any significant way.
     
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  16. Alleine Dragonfyre

    Alleine Dragonfyre Avatar

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    This. All of it.

    The gaming community has struck the gavel on this a while ago. Pay to win, and free buffs with purchase IS pay to win is a major turnoff and will gain us nothing, especially new players. Vanity microtransactions are fine, the norm, even in a majority of games now. Fairness is still the law of the land in gamer-space and there is no arguing it.

    I couldn't have said it better if I tried.

    Pretty sure that Lord British wasn't referencing the model planned for Shroud, but I'm also not in the man's head either.

    Really, where the money comes from ultimately depends on the popularity of the game at its base. Monthly sub or f2p plus dependency on a vanity shop will only work if the game is popular enough to pay for its own existence and at the level of profit the owners find it to be worth their time.

    The F2P with shop is a gamble. And like all good bets, the payoff can either be killer or a killing. Personally, knowing there is little difference when they're just trying to keep the doors open except one causes a huge payoff, I think the cash shop is actually a better choice.

    F2P is NOT a defeat anymore. It used to be as that was the path many failed mmo's took. Not anymore, however.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
  17. HannahAlpenglow

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    Agree - F2P is not a sign of defeat, but it does require a pretty different mindset than the SotA that we have come to know. And by that, I mean everything in the store should be cheap cheap cheap.

    Even with the half off pricing, items are still way too high for a F2P audience. So we seem to be in a no person’s land - still priced way to high for a mass audience, and maybe no longer high enough for a niche base to support.

    The only way we would know if F2P really works is of the pot commit to much lower pricing, but that puts existing funding at risk if many players do not come quickly. Tough situation all around.
     
  18. Floors

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    Oh wow look. Another new player starts a thread, never answers it and everyone fights over the silly PTW stuff that has been a done deal in the game for years.

    Are we dumb enough to do this EVERY single time, or what ? And it's literally the same players that said the same exact stuff a week ago when this same thing happened.

    Let's try to break the cycle for a change.

    PTW, and perennial concerns about it in the gaming community is NOT what is holding the game back. It's just NOT a mass market game, period. It appeals mainly to aging Ultima fans on a nostalgia kick and young people that don't like theme park games, maybe. But pretty much the former.

    The current strategy is raising close to 100,000 a month which is keeping the game going so.... what can anyone expect. It has to be like this. The game is not gonna become the next Fortnite or Minecraft, ever. No amount of removing PTW will make that happen, or addressing those rather overblown IMO, concerns.

    I remember when Archeage was gonna take over the world. Or CrowFall. Still being here is pretty amazing considering where the game was in 2016.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
  19. evillego6

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    Because it is often less lucrative and companies are inclined to seek greater profit.
     
  20. HannahAlpenglow

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    So break the cycle of any optimism and face reality that the game’s only option is to limp along month to month like now, with fewer and fewer devs as time goes by? Because yes, while the game is still alive the progress and future outlook given the current funding rate just plain sucks. I’d rather they take a shot and go down swinging, frankly.

    I doubt Port will make such an admission, but admire you putting it out there. But I don’t see Richard and Starr hanging in there if the future of this game is forever to be a bit over a million in revenue per year.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
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