I absolutely agree with Richard Garriott, what happened?

When they were 30, they listed their monthly operating costs as $330,000.

 

Can you explain bandwith issues means please? Never heard this from a company.

 

And I will respectfully disagree with you, Sir. The sandbox portion of the game was built around the quest for the Shroud of The Avatar, now has the sandbox portion become quite a lot of fun, absolutely. But to me, it doesn't change what LB wanted. And that was for each of us to be ourselves, not play a character, and be judged on our actions in the game. Of course, once players get a hand on a game things change as players gravitate to what they like. UO proved that.
Again that's all IMHO.

 

Bandwidth is a term co-opted from network engineering where it means the amount of traffic that can be carried over a connection.
In the business/software world it now means the amount of work that can be accomplished... the fewer people you have, the less bandwidth.

 

I read it as not having enough employees to get done all they would like to get done, could be way off base. But that's how I took it.

 

Fair enough... but that portion of the game is only (by Portalarium's own estimate) 40 hours of gameplay...

 

Whereas I agree with your sentiment, I have to split hairs.
What happened was they alleged that they had to build the MMO world first and then integrate the story and quest for the shroud. They then proceeded to run out of money before fully fleshing out and polishing the quest. Truth and Courage being just blocked in, but not given nearly enough work. So I would say the game was not built around the story at all.

And I also bought into Richard's vision of us being ourselves, choosing our path, and being judged at the end. We are a minority.

 

Infinite money would not have gotten the quest to a polished state, as it is built upon the sand, not the rock.

I have high hopes for a new simpler system, using tried and true contemporary systems.

 

I have kind of a funky perception about the idea of P2W/PTW. In my opinion, we pay for the experience of playing the game, and Portalarium has really triumphed in allowing a lot of very different ways to play the game ranging from the hardcore self-sufficiency survivalists to the grindcore UT princes/esses, to the creative types who just want a canvass.

We have it all and it's all getting better. They're trying to be circumspect.

As a result, they try to sell products that suit several very different perceptions of the game - which is great - but which are simultansously objectionable to other perceptions. It's inevitable. Adventurers believe houses to be cosmetic diversions while creative types think it to be the real emd game content. There's no bridging that perception gap.

Ergo, the debate in this thread originates from fundamental differences in expectations and can never actually be resolved.

So we should enjoy the game instead

 

I think if they nail this (including the last 20%! ) they'll bring a lot more revenue in. And I don't mean nail it as in replicate WoW's "quest" design. I mean nail it as in get the back-end scaffolding right and then give us a big 'ole QA pass on content and spelling, fix the dialogue box, then give us a solid journal to tie it all together.

Apply the same design principles to Episode II but make the quest resolution possibilities more varied perhaps? More branches are always good in a CRPG.

Oh and bonus points for a real save state for single-player. Starting at an instance entrance is not a real save state. Surely you can plug last known player co-ords into a player file on disk?

 

I think the issue (or not depending on your point of view) is that there is a lot more of one than the other and it continues to be the focus when it's seems clear the other needs the attention. Someone on another thread said a while ago that Portalarium had developed themselves into a corner where the majority if not all of the revenue was coming from selling hats and anime looking fishing rods to the same people as stretch goals during the fundraisers. I'd love to be proven wrong but there doesn't seem to be any new money coming in of note from gaining and retaining new players. So anything new on the adventuring side of things comes through painfully slow.

It feels as though the current funding model is almost solely based around asking the same people to keep putting their hand in their pocket every month. They seem happy to do that but how sustainable can it be? Jesters caps are not going to bring new players into the game.

 

Of all the ways to play, are there any that you can't do better or faster if you engage in P2W behavior? I mean, the only aspect you can't bypass, at the moment, is the grind needed to be competitive in PvP tournaments. Every housing tournament favors those who spend. Every shop that was popular back when location mattered was bought with cash, not igg. Even PvP is best played with a gank swarm, which would be easier to acquire if you are willing to pay for it.

While the game is a sandbox, meaning that players set their own win conditions, if two players set a competitive goal and one is willing to spend cash and the other not, assuming equal time in the game, the spender will win 100% of the time.

 

I see what many are saying here, but weren't all the microtransactions and really, the macrotransactions, a big part of why the game did not make enough money without them (because it turned many "real gamers" LB was referring to, off), which forced them to go f2p and rely even more on microtransactions? a bit of a downward spiral (my fav NIN album btw)

But I guess there is nothing that can be done about it now anyway, they need to make money of course.

So how to grow the playerbase? My personal experience when I let friends play is that there is not enough ingame rewards that are obvious for newer players. This combined with the big online store gives the IMPRESSION (true or false) that the game is p2w.

Giving the game an addictive loot cycle would be one of the most important steps the devs could make. People are getting tired of getting the same old stuff all the time pretty quick. They need a sense of progression within the first hours of play.

 

I'm curious... What Pay-2-Win strategies/items do you consider significantly helpful for either character advancement in PvE, or accelerating/easing the completion of the quest lines?

 

Assumptions, assumptions.
If you want to compare hardcore gamers you have to compare them correctly. Compare the one with money and no time with the one with time and no money.
If you do comparisons with Joe Average, Joe Average will always lose. No matter if you compare good ol Joe with the Money or the Time guy.

 

P2W needs to be looked at in the context of the game and not just PvE. Housing and crafting is considered an end game goal and being able to throw cash at those things is a massive advantage over someone with the same goal but not the money to spend. Arguably spending cash to get to a point quickly where you can craft the best equipment would have an impact on PvE. You can also just side step that and spend real money on gold to buy the best equipment.

 

Cant you jump into housing by finishing the newbie zone at the beginning of the game??

I havent played in a few weeks and pay minimal attention to the game in that time but heard this is a thing now, rendering all p2w housing complaints obsolete.

 

Well I guess you could swap the word “cash” with the word “time” or “friends” without changing the statement or the consequences as in all these chases the one without it is at a disadvantage.

 

Yessir, that's correct. Though i am sure you will be able to find a couple of people who tell you i am wrong ^^

 

I mean... technically turning on my PC is optional.

But in all seriousness, I'm really happy with where the game has gone. Maybe I don't play as much as everyone else, but I'm very happy with where my money went. It's basically Super UO in my eyes. I spend most of my time in SotA socializing, crafting, and doing the little mini-quests I can find. I also like to explore the various scenes. I don't know how most people feel about it, but just one glance at SotA on Reddit was more than enough to convince me never to go there again.