Let's try a different kind of theleton next time.

I am sure the idea isn't new, I will anyway pretend it is mine ;-)

We all love gimmicks. We got a lot of collectors here and that's all cool and froody.

But why not try a telethon that won't give us even more gimmicks but something for the whole community?

Let me do an example (disclaimer: the example is from the top of my head and only exist to deliver my point.)

At 20.000 Port will use the money to clone J. R. R. Tolkien and ask him to write ten quests for SotA

At 50.000 we will get a floating city that only appears when the constellations of the stars are right. It's inhabited by giant pink hamsters and full of new quests.

At 80.000 we can (try) to steal eggs from dragons and hetch them. Alas, dragons aren't very nice animals so as soon as the dragon is hetched it will turn red and roam the land to attack everybody and everything.

The trick with this kind of theleton would be to offer goals that wouldn't be part of ep 1 anyway. So nobody gets the feeling he or she would have to pay twice for something that would come anyway at some point in the near future.

That's it. Discuss!

@Berek
@DarkStarr
@Lord British
@Chris

 

@Earl Atogrim von Draken

Yes please.

My old suggestion was to have one recipe (teachable) in every telethon and given to us as a paper.

My other suggestion would be that one item gets a "brown" version put on the crown merchants.

 

Ah yes, i remember.
That's an idea i can get behind!
Non the less i would wish to aim for at least one bigger goal once in a while.

 

Well indeed the telethon goals do not have to be deco or gear or emotes or recipes….even if I would guess that cloning J.R.R. Tolkien will costs some more money and wouldn’t result in someone that could write some quest in the next years…but I do not want to be pedantic.

Still a good idea but I fear there are some possible problems.

E.g. sometimes we avatars tend to expect that features should be implemented at latest yesterday. Announcing a reached “feature for all avatars”-goal and everyone will get excited…everyone waits…and after some time at least some starts to complain why the promised feature isn’t implemented already. No offense but this is to be expected and so the devs have to at least find a good wording to minimize this behavior from the start. (e.g. in the direction that they will try to implement this feature till ep2 or ep3 but cannot promise it and may have to cancel/replace this feature at some point.)

Also I would suggest that just rarely one of the highest goals is such an additional feature as promising too many features can get a problem as ideas are limitless but not the working capacity of the devs.

And the estimated workload for the feature has to be far below the telethon goal. E.g. a floating city with giant pink hamster might be cool but I would guess it will also take a lot of time to create this scene but as I think to help to develop SotA the costs to create rewards has to stay as low as possible. I think such not too complex features would be e.g. a new additional skill, a new set of haircuts in the new you interface or a new type of monster.

 

@Lars von Drachental as i said, example from the top of my head. Exaggerated to deliver my point ;-)

Non the less you are correct. The offred streatch goal would have to be balancec between cost, doability, workload and time needed to impliment.
I never said it is easy. But i think it's worth a try to add some bigger goals here and there. Not every month of course.
@Spoon 's idea is a very good idae for every month. I knowingly aim for something bigger.

 

are you really saying somebody would... uhh.. complain?

 

@Lars von Drachental
@Earl Atogrim von Draken

Hmm. Good points here.

Well then, if I were given the task of implementing this idea then...hmmm..

First then we need to sort out the WHY to be able to define a WHAT and then progress to HOW.

Premise (why)
Goal is to create something which benefit the game and/or the community by having stretch goals with actual impact.
This while giving as much impression of player input as possible but retain the projects ability to steer and adapt.
Plus give the incentive for people to spend during the telethon to achieve such a goal.

Given that then it is easier. We don't want to promise too much, we don't want too long perspective, we want it to be something tangible which people directly understand.

OK. Hmm.

So after a minimal amount of thought then how about:

• Let's make this highlight a specific developer each month. So instead of promising X feature, we promise Y days with developer NNN.
  That way we set the limits and the expectations right away. Plus we get to showcase different parts of the team, where the community manager can get an interview etc.
  This way one could also hand pick people who would like to participate instead of the other way around.
• Then two weeks before the telethon that specific developer makes a short introduction in what they do. Plus presents a list of 5-10 things they 'could' work on given those Y days.
  After that the community can vote on the priority of those 5-10 things. Since this list is made by the dev themself then that could be things that dev would have loved to work on anyway but usually can't so would be positive for them as well.
• Thus when we arrive at the Update just before the telethon then the top voted priority is announced and that is presented as the "Dev Goal" reward tier. Thus we ensure that the most popular thing is taken which maximize potential revenue.
• Where the "Dev Goal" reward tier is really high - so the intention is to hit that about 1/3 of the time. Like 100k or something. Where the thinking is that the last money is really what is paying for those Y days.
• Then IF we reach that goal the project manager plans those Y days for that developer and sets them in the calender, which is announced by the community manager. So that when those days come up it is a known thing and known when and potential changes would go into the product IF successful. Kinda looking for something like the old Hangouts where work was done, so at the end one could have a 'Work of the Avatar' session or something.

Example:
We get announced that the Dev Goal is 3 days of Lum's time.
We get a short interview with Lum about what he does etc.
Lum makes a short list of quests that he would have liked to see done but which normally would be out-of-scope for him. Like an Evil™ quest or something.
The community votes on Lum's list.
The most popular of Lum's suggestions is announced.

So we are at the telethon and one of the top stretch goal rewards IF reached is 3 days of Lum's time working on the most popular suggestion.

Say that it is popular enough to get to that Evil™ quest, then the project manager books those days.
We get the announcement that then and then Lum will work on that and in which releases we might see the result.



Hmm. Looking at that then if I were project manager I'd rather go with the more pragmatic initial Spoon suggestion of 1 recipe and 1 brown item version per telethon.
This since switching to a monthly telethon schedule simply removed the window of opportunity for something like this.





EDIT:

Amendment:
What if it was public service assets?
Where the reward is an item that gives a boon on the asset.

For instance:

• Fishing Pond - craftable public service asset. Looks like one of the hot tubs but the sides are stoneworks etc with some flowers and anyone can fish in them.
  reward: Fishing hat that gives a bait recovery bonus when fishing in such ponds.

 

I thought that was the Kickstarter

 

Do you want me to really go over the features from the KS that won't make it into ep1 again? Really don't want to derail this.

 

No thank you.
We got enough of those.
Non the less my idea stands. As i said: nobody said it would be easy.

 

Yeah, I know.

No…I would never...I'm just saying that patience is a virtue and not every avatar is following this path.

@Spoon
I like that idea and I do not think monthly telethons removed the opportunity for this. E.g. the “buy a dev” is getting a fixed quarter feature. So to say we have each quarter the opportunity to “hire” a dev for something special and the summaries of all 3 quarter telethons are unlocking the days we can "command" this dev.
e.g.
summarized 50k = 1 day dev time in the next quarter for something special
summarized 100k = 2 days dev time in the next quarter for something special
summarized 150k = 3 days dev time in the next quarter for something special
summarized 200k = 4 days dev time in the next quarter for something special


First telethon during quarter
- Announcing who the dev for this quarter is and maybe short description/presentation of his work
- Offering/describing the possible work the in the last quarter unlocked dev could do and maybe there are even options for already announced features that get this way the possibility to get some priority
- Describing how we are able to participate in choosing one of the options for the last quarters dev (e.g. a poll in the forum for the next 2 weeks)
10k gimmick1
25k gimmick2
35k gimmick3
50k first dev day
65k gimmick4
The telethon ends with e.g. $67.5k

Second telethon during quarter
- presenting the results of the special dev work that was unlocked in the previously quarter and placed at choice during the last telethon
10k gimmick1
25k gimmick2
32.5k second dev day (100k – 67.5k from previous telethon)
50k gimmick3
65k gimmick4
82.5k third dev day
The telethon ends with e.g. $70k

Third telethon during quarter
- The dev is maybe participating during the telethon additionally in the conference room to encourage us to spend some more money that he can work on something more special
- asking the avatar to make suggestions what the dev could work on (e.g. in a prepared thread)
12.5k third dev day (150k - 67.5k - 70k from previous telethons)
25k gimmick1
35k gimmick2
50k gimmick3
62.5k forth dev day
80k gimmick4
The telethon ends with e.g. $71.5k and yay we unlocked 4 days for special dev work (67.5k + 70k + 71.5k = 209k)

We would see and learn some more of the different devs and "by the way" unlocking during the telethons some days these devs can work on something special for us.
Also we wouldn't need one very good telethon to unlock dev time instead it is for sure that the dev will work at something special and we would just devine how much time he is getting.

 

@Spoon @Lars von Drachental
Interessting idea.
Just asking myself if there isn't too much organisation involved fo the devs.
I was really thinking to give one very specific goal.
A new additional map for the plains road ecounter or something like that.

 

I would guess this would be the job of "just" Berek.
I don't think the other devs would have to do that much extra work during or in preparation of the telethons.

 

As easy as herding cats...

 

Edited Title.
Didn't even realize the autocorrect on my mobile changed it to...something, lol.

 

the reason I first looked, had no idea what the telethon replaced word meant
happy accident intresting thread/read

 

I think someone asked if we could have a Darkstarr-themed Telethon during the last one, and that sounds interesting.

I'd still like a set of telethons where at least one of the goals is a new model (pets, costume, etc), which would have the side effect of adding new creatures to the game. i.e., we get a fancy lion pet, but it adds lions as a new creature to some scenes. We have far too many scenes with the same enemies, over and over.

Another thing I'd like to see is a Book theme, where the stretch goals are things like pre-decorated bookshelves (storage item), a pack of ornate book covers, and sets of new books. There are thousands of books that could easily be converted from Project Gutenberg and make great books we could find lying around the world. Having the same books on every bookshelf is tiresome.

 

Moooounnnttssss

 

I had them in mind as example but i though opening that can of worms wouldn't be the best idea ;-)