Lord Marshal: Tempting, But....

Looking forward to that update.

I did feel the same way doing the upgrade. Why do i have to give up my bonus i got. Why not just keep it the way it was.

 

We have completed our evaluation of the concerns voiced in this thread (and related Customer Service tickets). Those concerns include:

1. Can backers use titles from tiers below their pledge level?
2. Did Founder Lord's (and above) get their Founder Crafting Stations replaced with Benefactor Crafting Stations?
3. What is the exact mix of Founder/Benefactor crafting stations since the modified pledges were announced?
4. Some Founders feel they are losing their Founder status when upgrading to the new Knight Marshal and Lord Marshal tiers due to those tiers not including any new Founder-specific rewards.
5. Should new tiers that include a home have both a Founder and Benefactor version of those homes?
6. Should Founders continue to receive discounted prices on all new tiers ever created?

Here is our current thinking on each of these points:

1. Can backers use titles from tiers below their pledge level?

Yes they can. Founders will be able to choose from all the titles, both Founder and Benefactor, at their tier level and lower.

2. Did Founder Lord's (and above) get their Founder Crafting Stations replaced with Benefactor Crafting Stations?

No, they did not. See my post above.

3. What is the exact mix of Founder/Benefactor crafting stations since the modified pledges were announced?

See Answer #4 for details.

4. Some Founders feel they are losing their Founder status when upgrading to the new tiers due to those tiers not including any new Founder-specific rewards.

@Artair Geal expressed this sentiment with his original post in this thread: "...there's something about the Lord Marshal tier that sits ill with me as a Royal Founder/Kickstarter backer. In a weird way, it feels like I would be downgrading from Royal Founder status to Benefactor status. I know, I know, that's an odd statement..."

We agree that, on first reading, this does seem like an odd statement, because no one loses their Founder or Royal Founder status, and keep all the copious rewards that status provides them.

Upon deeper reflection, these feelings become understandable, especially since the modified pledge descriptions indicated the Founder crafting stations were being replaced by Benefactor crafting stations (which they're not, as explained above). These feelings have never had to be experienced before, because we've never created new pledge tiers before. Until now.

To us, "Founder" rewards are, for the most part, those rewards we created prior to the end of the initial Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign that was extended to May 20, 2013. In order to maximize the crowdfunding impact of the additional development costs for any new rewards introduced since May 20, 2013, we've endeavored to make sure that most of those new rewards were available to all backers. This was the pattern we followed for the content of the Knight Marshal and Lord Marshal pledges.

That being said, it is also important to us that we preserve the emotional value of being a Founder (as much as we reasonably can within our development budget constraints). So, given that goal, we are modifying (and clarifying) some of the rewards to help preserve the sense of being a Founder.

Just as we did for many of the Founder titles, we are adding the titles "Royal Knight Marshal" and "Royal Lord Marshal" to those pledge rewards. Here are all the pledge changes (and clarifications):

• KNIGHT MARSHAL
  • ** Exclusive Founder Rewards **
    • (Clarification) One expert level crafting station for your home, uniquely identifiable as a Founder's crafting station. (this is a carryover of the Founder crafting station from the Knight pledge)
    • (New) Your in-game avatar will receive the honorific title of "Royal Knight Marshal" to be proudly displayed in gold colored font for all to see (title visibility controlled by player).
• LORD
  • ** Exclusive Founder Rewards **
    • (Clarification) Two (2) expert level crafting stations for your home, uniquely identifiable as Founder's crafting stations.
      • (Note: This means that Founder Lords will receive a total of 6 expert crafting stations: 4 Benefactor-themed and 2 Founder-themed crafting stations. These stations do not stack with previous tiers).
    • (New) You will receive five (5) starter-level, indestructible, crafting tools for the skills of your choice, uniquely identifiable as Founder's crafting tools.
      • (Note: This means that Founder Lords will receive a total of 10 indestructible, crafting tools: 5 Benefactor-themed and 5 Founder-themed crafting tools. These tools do not stack with previous tiers).
• LORD MARSHAL
  • ** Exclusive Founder Rewards **
    • (New) Four (4) expert level crafting stations for your home, uniquely identifiable as Founder's crafting stations.
      • (Note: This means that Founder Lord Marshals will receive a total of 12 expert crafting stations: 8 Benefactor-themed and 4 Founder-themed crafting stations. These stations do not stack with previous tiers).
    • (New) You will receive ten (10) starter-level, indestructible, crafting tools for the skills of your choice, uniquely identifiable as Founder's crafting tools.
      • (Note: This means that Founder Lords will receive a total of 20 indestructible, crafting tools: 10 Benefactor-themed and 10 Founder-themed crafting tools. These tools do not stack with previous tiers).
    • (New) A unique Founder Lord Marshal's throne
    • (New) Your in-game avatar will receive the honorific title of "Royal Lord Marshal" to be proudly displayed in gold colored font for all to see (title visibility controlled by player).

5. Should new tiers that include a home have both a Founder and Benefactor version of those homes?

Homes are very expensive and time-consuming for us to build (especially large homes) and we felt it was a better decision to apply our limited development funds to other game content.

6. Should Founders continue to receive discounted prices on all new tiers ever created?

Some of you feel it is unfair for us to introduce new tiers unless Founders are given a price break similar to what they were granted during the 1-Year Founder Promotion. Honestly, this is a difficult one for us to get our heads around. We cannot argue with anyone's feelings, they are what they are. However we do not agree with the restriction that any new Pledge tier we introduce must be discounted to Founders. Beyond the 1-Year Founder Promotion that ended April 7, 2014, we have never stated, or implied, that Founders will continue to receive a discount on existing or future pledges. We honestly believe, and feel, that our decision is a fair one and apologize to those of you that disagree.

We are immensely appreciative of each and every one of our backers, old and new, that have helped (and are still helping) to fund the development of Shroud of the Avatar. We, the development team, as well as all future players of SotA, will owe a special debt of gratitude to the early Founders that Kickstarted us, without whom none of us would be here. We hope the addition of the new Exclusive Founder rewards outlined above will help our Founders to preserve the emotional value of their status at the new pledge levels.

sincerely,
dallas
COO/Co-Founder, Portalarium

 

On the whole, this addresses enough of my concerns to make me a happy backer again. Although I still have to recondense all of my bonus-eligible add-on pledges to finalize my upgrade to Lord Marshal, the overall savings ($104) approximates the discount I received as a Kickstarter backer, thus balancing my own ledgers. Thank you, Dallas, and thank you to Portalarium as a whole for listening to our concerns. We appreciate every bit of your hard work, and this will be far from the last sum of money you receive from me.

I haven't disclosed this previously, but I feel the need to now. More than 80% of the money I've pledged has been done while un- or under-employed. It's very hard to make Boston-level rent contributions in the real world while backing at this level, but I believe in Portalarium and its mission very strongly. You've always taken care of me as a backer, and I plan to do the same for all of you as best I can.

Keep up the excellent work. I'm proud to contribute to your payroll and continued success!

 

Dear Portalarium team,

I disagree, that we founders want absolutely a discount on any pledge upgrade.
We want only the discount preserved, which we got for our current pledge and not pay suddenly more than a benefactor for nullifying the once granted discount just for further supporting Portalarium.
I.e. we are at Lords pledge now - it should not play a role if we paid 1500 or 1600 Dollar to reach this - we should have to pay only the same difference for the intended pledge level upgrade as a benefactor and not the former discount on top. That way we still pay more, as if we would have the old founder prices (i.e. from Lord to Baron 3 the difference was once 1500$ - 3600$ = 2100$. Since Baron 3 has been increased to 3800, each player who is Lord now should only have to pay the difference between benefactor Lord price and benefactore Baron price - which would be 2200$ - still 100$ more than for the old founder upgrade price. If founders would ask for the founder discount for further upgrades, we would insist on the old Baron 3 pledge price, what we don't).

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

Thanks for the clarifications Dallas + Team SOTA. I am personally happy/glad to have reached Lord Marshal status.

So total of 20 indestructible tools, and 12 expert crafting stations at Founder Lord Marshal (not royal). Does that mean that basically all the starting to expert tools will be there? Are there more tools/stations than that? I know that there will be better tools/tables as skill increases, but with all the gear from the get-go, seems nice to me.

 

@Dallas - Thanks for the reasoned response. I know that many Lords would have gone to Lord Marshall had it been a tier - imagine if you will, that you created a tier at $1601 that included many rewards that the Lord didn't get, but Lords who upgraded pre April 7th would feel aggravated because instead of a 1$ upgrade they feel forced to pay that $101. This is further above that tier, but it feels in part the same way.

That said I understand Portalarium can make any marketing decisions they wish and give discounts when they way and I appreciate that you explained your standpoint and I consider it closed.

Edit - I had forgotten about all the tiers becoming Royal/Noble between Royal Artisan & Citizen!
I do have one thought on the titles though:
Why Royal? Currently the only title I'm aware of using "Royal" is for "Royal Founders." (Not Founders). It seems odd to tack Royal in front for those three tiers, I think all that people wanted was gold lettering for those titles

Great post and thanks for the "free" upgrades to those tiers - I wasn't expecting any!

 

20 indestructible tools (10 Benefactor + 10 Founder) and 12 expert stations (8 Benefactor and 4 Founder) are included in the Founder (and Royal Founder) Lord Marshal Pledge. Currently, we've implemented 16 crafting tools and 10 crafting stations, so this means you will have some duplicates.

 

Here here!

Thanks for laying everything out completely and clearly. I think Lord Marshall tier is fantastic, and really the perfect compromise between Lord and Baron.

Also, btw, love & can't wait to see the new clockwork stuff. This little whiff of Oz almost stops the voice in my head who constantly barks for a hot air balloon

 

I think everyone's really waiting for that Spoon of Prosperity, but I prefer sporks personally.

Thanks dallas for the update!

 

Sorry If I'm misunderstanding your question, but some benefactors were elevated to founder status through original founders before the April cutoff. So those of us who got founder status that way are not Royal founders who started at the beginning of the kick starter. So to differentiate the two categories of founders original founder backers are thus Royal Founders. Hopefully I'm not telling you something you already know, but it wouldn't be the first time I've misunderstood a question lol

 

In all fairness to Portalarium, these aren't the first titles with "Royal" in them. I gifted a Royal Artisan pledge to my husband, and he's a Founder-by-proxy as a result, not a Royal Founder. I don't mind the prefix being shared between Founders and Royal Founders, so long as it's in gold for all to see.

 

At the end of the Kickstarter campaign "Grace Period" (May 20, 2013), we introduced the Post-Kickstarter pledge rewards for Founders and Benefactors. Here is the link to that post: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=24856, and this excerpt describes the new title structure implemented at that time:

We also want to thank all of you that provided feedback about how we should handle in-game honorific titles for new backers and Early Founders. There is quite a lively thread filled with great title suggestions over on the forums (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...eedback-request-for-new-tier-titles-dev.1385/). We did our best to weigh all the suggestions, and balance the varied considerations. Our primary goals for the title modifications were 1) Provide special, easily identifiable, titles to the Early Founders, 2) clean up some of the title ranking inconsistencies and generic titles, and 3) allow Early Founders to choose from any of the titles, including the new backer titles, the special founder titles, and even the inconsistently ranked and generic titles originally described in the Kickstarter tiers.​

​

There were several suggestions to make the Early Founder titles stand out visually by using a different colored font, which is a great idea! Thus, all Early Founder titles will be in gold colored font when viewed in-game! Additionally, most of the Early Founder titles either have a special prefix, or are ranked higher than the new backer title for the same tier. Several community members posted the proper ranking of titles, which we also cross-referenced with Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_and_noble_ranks). The biggest changes were with the Lord tier and above (where we didn’t adequately research proper ranking when we originally named those tiers and titles). We did our best to balance the divergent community opinions regarding these title changes.​

​

Here is a table of all the titles for Founders and Benefactors that was decided at that time:

​

As you can see from this table, the prefix "Royal" (based on popular feedback) was applied to several of the Founder pledge titles.

In Update #59 (02/07/14) we announced the title of "Royal Founder" for all backers that have a pledge dated prior to May 20, 2013. Yes, it can be pretty confusing to keep up with all these titles. Some interesting titles can come from these combinations. If you happen to have the $60 Founder Pledge purchased before May 20, 2013, your title becomes "Royal Founder Founder", or if you have the"Royal Artisan" pledge your title would be "Royal Founder Royal Artisan". We haven't yet designed the optimal way to view these titles in their various combinations. And we'll provide a UI that allows you to select which of your various titles you wish to display.

 

Spork of Prosperity! Love it!

 

Thank you very much, Dallas, for pursuing this and for bringing us an update. Like Artair, I'm not exactly rolling in money either, but I am proud to have put forward as much as I can toward this project because your entire team is doing such an awesome job at supporting this player base and community. You're reminding us that relationships consumers and producers matter in an industry where that prospect looks otherwise exceedingly bleak, and that is inspiring. Thank you.

I want to touch on this bit because I feel the core point we want made on the issue of Founder pricing has been missed. I apologize if that's not the case, but if it is, the below quoted snippet probably won't satisfy the people who are upset. Apologies for the wall of text to follow. I believe clarity on this issue is more important than conciseness, as more than a few people feel very strongly about this.

The issue with the pledge levels pointedly has much to do with the fact that Lord Marshal was made into such an attractive tier. When this whole thing was first proposed, you might recall that criticism of the initial plan suggested no Lords were at all interested in upgrading, and per that feedback, the plan was revised. Except the tier was made too good. Way too good. Within minutes of the announcement of that change, opinions swayed from, "Ain't no way I'm upgrading!" to "Yeah boy! I can't wait!" I won't go into the details of what was changed, but the fact that the tier is very, very attractive is worth realizing here.

Now the dilemma. This tier did not exist prior to April 7th, nor had the community been given any indication that additional pledge tiers were on the way. The issue this creates is one of choice. For many people on and before April 7th, Lord was our stopping point because the jump to Baron was either too out of reach or not worth the price (at $1,600--twice the cost of a Lord account). That was fine then because the way the pledges were structured placed a very high value on property sizes. Most Lords were happy at Lord. But that changed when the extra rewards were added to the Lord Marshal pledge, making it into a much more valuable tier for +$600-$700 than Baron previously was for +$1,600.

I want you to know that I understand Portalarium's position on this. I understand that prices are what they are now, and that that should be ok particular because the dynamic has shifted. However, I do not agree. I feel that this position fails to acknowledge the frustration of having such a beautifully laden option put within most of our reaches, forcing us to choose between nabbing that option or keeping our discount. For most of us, the situation is simple: if we had had the option to grab the Lord Marshal tier before April 7th, we would have, and no one would complain. But that's not the situation. By upgrading to Lord Marshal, Founders and Royal Founders are being forced to sacrifice the monetary benefit they received especially for, if marketing is to be believed, being early backers. It's ironic in a pointedly distasteful kind of way.

People will survive if you just flat out say no, it's not happening. But I hope this at least makes the issue of concern with regard to pricing clearer. Most of us had the strategy during the Founder pricing promotion to push straight to the tier we want and sit on it because we knew that the promotion would end. We planned for that. We could not have factored these new tiers into those plans, though, and that has a lot of us feeling upset because we now feel forced to give up one (very nice) advantage we previously had in order to step up to these particularly compelling tiers.

I must say, too, that it's regrettable that this is a concern. I say that the Lord Marshal tier in particular is so good because it really is. Twelve crafting stations is a full set! Awesome! Plus a Town lot and a Village lot! Great! With wicked large basements to go with them! All for $600-$700! Can't beat that with a stick. But we all remember when upgrading from Knight to Lord for $800 or $750 only got you one extra crafting station, a Town lot (instead of a Village), and a fancy chair. That wasn't so long ago. It's a big change that made these upper tiers far more attractive. You should know that I understand that pledges are donations to the game and not purchases, but you should also know that for this player in particular, that is sometimes easy to forget, especially now. If I really think about it hard, I can't help but glance the thought that I really shouldn't have the impression that any tier is good. Different or unique, ok, but good? $600-700 worth of good? Knowing the value of digital real estate as I do, I'd say it's legitimately close. I know that I've made a donation, but I feel like I've done business. And if I feel that way having bought the pledge, imagine how people who haven't backed yet feel.

 

Ah, yes, this is a variation on the question I answered. You are correct that any Founder that upgrades to any tier (old or new) after April 7, 2014 will end up paying the same price as Benefactors for the tier they are upgrading to (i.e. if a Founder and a Benefactor upgrade from Lord to Lord Marshal they will both wind up paying $2200 in total for that pledge). This has nothing to do with us adding new tiers, and is a side-effect of ending the special Founder price-protection after 1 year. And we understand this could disincentivize some Founders from upgrading. On the other hand, we continue to provide all of the Founder rewards when you upgrade, and even adding new Founder rewards as we just did, which does provide further incentive to upgrade.

We understand that some Founders may choose not to upgrade because of this (even with the 10% Pledge Bonus Promotion). We completely respect and honor their choice, and we remain deeply appreciative of whatever pledge they provide to help fund the development of Shroud of the Avatar.

 

Hey Lord Trenyc - Thanks for your words of support, and for the clarification of your issue. As I explained in my reply to Olahorand, "...any Founder that upgrades to any tier (old or new) after April 7, 2014 will end up paying the same price as Benefactors for the tier they are upgrading to (i.e. if a Founder and a Benefactor upgrade from Lord to Lord Marshal they will both wind up paying $2200 in total for that pledge)...and is a side-effect of ending the special Founder price-protection after 1 year. And we understand this could disincentivize some Founders from upgrading."

It is our hope, that by continuing the deep and rich Founder rewards for all pledges and upgrades for as long as pledges exist for this project (and even adding new Founder rewards as we just did), will help provide a sense of value-add for the tiers being upgraded to (and, according to your comment, we did "too" good a job of that with the Lord Marshal tier!).

 

Either way you slice it founders+ came out like a champ. Now let them finish it with out more distractions I'm ready to play already!

 

This is all good, but I think I remember Lord of the Manor having a new title as well. Prince! So does the founder LOTM get a gold Prince?

FYI -- I'm not LOTM, but I thought they should be able to have a little golden title if they choose the Prince. Heck at that pledge level they should have Diamond Fonts. lol

 

Thank you for the response - I forgot about Royal Artisan of course and totally blanked on the others since I went straight to Citizen/Knight to start! I of course clicked some random pledge tiers looking for Royal but only clicked the higher ones when in fact the majority of tiers have the Royal Title! Thanks again for both the response and the links and chart This was just a point of curiousity for me - and curiousity satisfied!

 

You are correct. "Prince/Princess" was later added to "Grand Duke" and "Archduke" as additional titles for LotM. The table in my post was from the title changes that went in effect at the end of the Kickstarter Grace Period (May 20, 2013).