Lot Selection Sequencing

Uh the promise to schedule the housing in prioritised batches is in several of the KS campaign videos themselves. It was one of the motivators given to help reach the stretch goals and is why player control points, castles/keeps town etc with player sieges got in.. And money... A LOT of money, has been put down based specifically on those promises. It's way too late to change that now. when they realised what they had to adhear to they had an impossible choice to make, and opted for the lesser of 2 evils... And it is a much lesser one. I don't think they could actually be more reasonable about it to be honest.

 

There is no discussion that a prioritized selection was promised. The question is whether or not it was promised exclusively to Founders, or to all backers. As I said, until very recently the FAQ said that backers, not founders, would get a prioritized window for lot selection. Many Benefactors pledged a lot of money on the assumption that they would, alongside Founders, be the first to choose their lots.

 

Based purely on the amount they paid? Knowing that they actually paid more then founders even though founders were told that's not a problem as they would still get to go first when the issue was raised on the day the prices went up?

Let ignore that for a second... Your argument is the benefactors should be accommodated because they made a decision based on an assumption of something they didn't do enough research on? "Backers" do still get a prioritised window, that process is just more informatively clarified in the FAQ now. It never specifically said benefactors would go first either... I find it difficult to believe that pledged on the assumption that they would as well. I don't think you can hold Portalarium responsible for those who acted on assumptions. The information was there, it wasn't front and centre but anyone actually seeking clarification demonstrably got it.

I know the prioritisation window is a big deal... But the degree to which some members in the community on both side of the argument are overacting to the fairest possible response on the matter is saddening. Everyone who pledged for one will get a lot. If you are anyone other then a lord of the manor and you really expected to "go first" you were kidding yourself from the get go though.

 

You can't expect all new backers to watch every single video and forum posts about pledge rewards and hold them responsible if they don't though. When people pledge, they will read the reward description on the pledge page, and that's all that can be expected. If extra information was given in some obscure part of the forums, comment section on an article or a video posted back in april, then that information should also have been added to the pledge description. All I see in the front page is:

Includes All Rewards from EDELMANN Level!


(Property deeds and duplicated rewards limited to 1 per pledge)


REWARDS:

• Rent free, Village Level Property Deed, transferable between players
• A special, commission free Vendor!
• Unique, upscale Benefactor Knight's home!
• A 2-Story, Village Stone Basement
• Available only to backers, a unique Benefactor Knight's piece of furniture, as a digital, in-game decoration for your house.
• Your in-game avatar will receive the honorific title of "Sir/Dame" and "Knight" to be proudly displayed for all to see (title visibility controlled by player).
• Special Benefactor Level plaque as a digital, in-game decoration for your house

** Estimated game delivery: Oct 2014 **

And in addition to that, the housing FAQ said:

First priority will be given to backers for lot choice. The order will be determined by amount of pledge. Backers will be given an exclusive window to choose their lots. Each backer can choose exactly one lot during the window. The next window will be given to those who purchase lots from the Add-On Store. After that, window lot choice will be open to all players.

That is the information I pledged on. Now the information has changed, and my money has already been taken.

 

That says nothing about priority at all. All it says is you will get a home... Which you will. So... The description doesn't lie. You will get a home, so you are getting what you paid for.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but when I backed this project the decision of who gets to place their house first did not even enter my thought process. I backed the project because I believe in what is being developed.

My honest view is that to be able to place in your 'ideal' location, you would have to of pledged in the region of Baron level.

I really don't get why people are getting so upset over it all.

 

I agree. The game is not just about housing and lot location.

If housing is the only reason you want to play this game then try Sims or Minecraft. Having said that I think housing is a contributing major reason many of us are excited about Shroud. While I would love to have a huge Manor on day 1 I am sure I'm like many and won't have paid the "pay to win" the lot of my choice. I loved the housing in UO and part of the fun of the game was the "in-game" saving and working to earn enough gold to obtain the home of my dreams.

What I'm trying to say is if you can't affort the 1st class ticket to go from LA to NYC then drive and enjoy the fun on the trip. The fun thing about life is the trip not the destination.

 

What I understood from kickstarter promises was that we would be given lot selection based on 1st Amount of pledge, and 2nd when you pledged. They can assign us a number breaking that out for all the $500+ pledges. We are already assigned a number based on date/time of our pledge. So it should be fairly easy to sort it by amount, then time. The only issue I see though is I pledged the exact Knight amount, and I cannot change that amount without going up to Lord. That would give benefactors lot selection over me because they paid an extra $50. So if we take the $ amount out and stick just to pledge levels and when we pledged those people during kickstarter that pledged an extra $20 or $100 to get better lot selection are now not getting that lot selection priority. The other option is to put benefactors in one group and founders in another, with benefactors going last.

So there isn't really a good way to do this other than the way they have chosen, pledge rank and founder vs benefactors. I guess it will be a land rush. I was hoping for a system where we can select our lots prior to launch and if we select one someone else has priority over me on that I'd get a message saying it's taken by a higher rank. Oh.. I just realized, my pledge date doesn't match my date/time on my profile, because I registered on the website march 29th, but I pledged on March 11th (shown on kickstarter) ... so unless they import that information the system I would like to see wouldn't work. But the way it would work is you wouldn't be able to tell if a lot was taken or not, you just select a lot for your home and if it's already taken by a higher rank you'll get a message saying unavailable, if a lower rank has it, it will just place, no message to you, but the person you bumped will get a message they need to make a new lot selection. That prevents people from taking a spot just because it's taken already. benefactors will always be lower ranked than founders and founders will be placed by amount/date in rankings. Open it up for a 3 day window(Friday-Sun). then give anyone who was bumped and didn't get a chance to place another 24 hour window. and then another till all are done. If you don't place during the first window you lose your chance at priority. the windows can be made longer/shorter as needed.

That would eliminate the land rush for founders, but benefactors will still be rushing because they can't bounce each other off unless they also sort those pledges by date/time. Which I would support.

 

You mean a system like this?

 

Yes!

Well I had the idea before you wrote that:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ting-locations-will-there-be.3743/#post-65953




I think in that thread we were collaborating a bit back on forth with issues/fixes to the system.... Nice job writing it all up, I didn't even see you had done that.

 

From Darkstarr yesterday in IRC:

Spoiler: hex entry

...
15:12 <+Astrobia> Darkstarr someone else had a concern about the entry points in hexes. When you enter a hex from the overworld map will you arrive in a fixed point (which has chokepoint/ganking concerns) a random of several entry locations, or a relative location based on where you entered?

15:16 <~DarkStarr> Astrobia: Depends on hex. Some will be specific, some will have randomized entry points ...

As such, lot location is very much a concern for some players. Why? Because, as described, vendors can only go on lots. As described, there's the possibility ingress from the overworld map into a civ hex will be via a fixed point. Similarly, given there is no global purchasing interface (which is a good thing, in my opinion), players must travel to purchase goods from an NPC player vendor, located on their lot.

The resulting consequence of that design choice is that vendors closest to the ingress/egress point, should it be fixed for civ hexes, will have a significant advantage versus someone who may be 5 minutes farther into the hex. Five minutes you say? No, can't be? Turns out, based on Owl's Head, 2m30s+ is the time it takes to go from ingress to the farthest lot at in the back of the town. There and back, at least five minutes.
Now, if I put my NPC vendor on my village plot AT the ingress point, travel time for my customers is near zero, and they will definitely buy from me, even if my prices are slightly higher, compared to my competition, 5 minutes of travel away.

Similarly, decisions like "there will be gate/recall spells" also have a potential impact here. We don't know if you can mark locations within civ hexes. If you can, then travel is moot, and lot location matters less, although still a bit. If you can't mark locations within civ hexes, but can only mark on the overland map, we're back to lot location having great value. We don't know if you can recall OUT of civ hexes. If you can, then the trips are only one-way, half the time, and lot location will have less, although still some, value.

Many veteran players know that, if successful, there is a tremendous potential here for guilds to outfit prime location vendors at ingress points, and this will be a prime source of revenue. If you can mark/recall within a civ hex, in front of a players lot, then where you place the vendor becomes more a matter of loading time/performance than travel time. If you can mark/recall within a civ hex, vendors will be spread out over the entire world.

Lastly, the lack of a global auction house in the traditional sense drives much of this concern. However, if we knew there was a global SEARCH interface (not purchase, just search) then much of this concern goes away. Why? Because players can then be efficient and smart with their time, rather than forced into tedious hunt and peck activities. If you knew you could buy new armor, weapons, or reagents at deadq's lot in Kingsport, no issue, travel onward to purchasing glory!

It's potentially a big deal, and the lack of detail ... well, let's just say it's holding some people back, and leave it at that for now.

 

I do like the idea of the search function. Websites were setup for UO that performed that function because it is too tedious to search each vendor. I don't want to spend my entire game time shopping. The fun thing about that is it isn't an auction system (everything is essentially set for buy it now) and since you can't buy it and have it delivered to you you are still going out into the world to get to that vendor before someone else does so there could be some races for who gets to a super cheap item first.

 

Yeah, Portalarium are in a bit of a bind here. It's going to be interesting to see how they solve this.

Dallas Snell on April 24, 2013

Hey Everyone - Dallas "Gorn" Snell here, Executive Producer for SotA. The team has been discussing these very important issues that all of you have surfaced since we published the latest update. Richard has been linked in to these discussions even though it is 2:00 am in Berlin where he is a keynote speaker at the Quo Vadis Game Conference. We greatly value all of you, the early Kickstarter backers, that have made it possible for us create Shroud of the Avatar! And as befits your early-backer stakeholder value to this project, all backers during the 30 day campaign that concluded on April 7 will have priority property selection over any and all backers that came after April 7. Additionally, all tiers above the new Edelmann tier (Knights, Barons, etc.) will inherit the rewards from both the Edelmann tier and the Citizen tier! All of you that backed us during the Kickstarter campaign are the VIP's making this game possible, and we can never thank you enough! You have our deepest, heartfelt appreciation for your support, and ongoing collaboration to make Shroud of the Avatar the best game it can be!

Technically, you're right. Lot priority is not mentioned at all when pledging. The above quote is a policy that can be changed at Portalarium's discretion but whatever they decide, it potentially will upset one set of backers or the other. 23,379 Founders or 2,643 Benefactors

I have no preference one way or the other and hope that Portalarium can find an amicable solution for everyone.

 

An application of The Virtues would likely be a good path forward.
Nothing like the practical application of Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility to set a person right.

 

This will be interesting to see how this plays out. It will vary depending on village, town, or city layout. Once players purchase your goods at the ingress point, which typically would be on the outskirts, what next? Quite possibly they'd need to go into town for some other purpose or to continue their crafting or whatever. And once there, perhaps they might need more goods and will just walk to the next closest vendor instead of again heading out to the outskirts where your vendor is and then walk back into town again to resume their activities.

There needs to be some incentive to continue onward into town and that's why the layout is going to be key. Be it public services or other non-player owned buildings or NPCs they need to interact with or whatever. An analogy: casinos have popped up on the outskirts of Vegas yet they are still as unpopular as they ever were since they opened. Sure, some people do stop there. But most still head into town to do their thing. There's incentive and other things worthy of that trip into town. Again, it's all about layout and what's offered in each town to motivate them not to stop at the outskirts.

Furthermore, they are now considering vendor lots for non land/home owners. These also may be only in the town centers.

 

Too late, they've already Forsaken the Virtues

 

Lot selection priority isnt mentioned when pledging now, but it also wasnt mentioned while throwing money at the Kickstarter campaign.So why is it that important?

Okey, so im a Benefactor.. Yes. Because i missed the KS Window by 1 ½ week. Great.
But the fact remain, i contribute as much ( and even alot more than the avarage Founder ) to the great game that this will be, why should i be less important?

Ask yourself this question Founders; if the amount of money pledged is irrelevant to the level of rewards and queue position, then why on earth is a small window of 1 month ( and whoever got lucky enough to hit the window ) matter ?

Some say " This game wouldnt have been here for you to pledge now if it wasnt for us Founders ", Oh sure, but i´m also sure you guys dont complain about all the stretched goals that us benefactors contribute to? Should the Stretched goals be exclusive to benefactors only, because we are the ones paying for it?

The entire point with the Pledging system is to give people rewards for supporting the game development, it's so obvious that the amount of money thrown into the project should contribute into not only better rewards, but also bigger 'gratitude' , quite the opposit of whats going on right now. Because a founder around $300 get better items/rewards and more gratitude than i do at $1600 benefactor level. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pure BS.

 

I think this is where heated debates happen. Benefactors aren't any less important than Founders. They're not second class citizens in any way. This is simply a matter of communication, wording and logistics to solve this problem. Unfortunately, this is the situation we're in until Portalarium figures out a solution that works for everyone.

Actually, no. All of the committed stretch goals (up to $2M) were achieved during that Kickstarter campaign. So only Founders made that possible. Having said that, the Benefactors are just as important in helping to continue funding the game afterwards, along with the many Founder pledge upgrades and add-on store purchases from everyone.

 

Lot selection priority, including having each $1 count, was indeed mentioned in the Hangout videos during the Kickstarter. Most of those videos were never archived. It's important because anyone who pledged extra thinking they were getting a head start on others may not have actually pledged that if it wasn't mentioned.

Which stretch goals are you referring to? (EDIT: I see smack jumped right to the point on that one, without the extra step of making you work for proof. )

I hate to burst your bubble, but not everyone pledged out of the goodness of their own heart, 100%. Many people, either wholly or in part, pledged because of the perks. To remove those perks now would be dishonorable.

 

It's true, some may wish to repair and/or sell, but the key element remains; how recall/fast travel works? I hope they don't start selling vendor lots without providing much more detail on all these interdependent systems and mechanics. It would be a real shame to purchase a vendor-only lot for considerable money, only to discover everyone can recall everywhere, directly to lots, and where your house or vendor is doesn't matter at all.

Similarly, it would be unfortunate to have the option to purchase a vendor-only-lot withOUT the knowledge of how civ-hex-ingress or recall/fast travel is going to work. That would be a risky purchase, from my perspective.

Personally, if recall/mark is limited to the overland map only, I plan on finding the town with the shortest path from ingress to crafting stations, and put my house on that path. But I'm reasonably sure several thousand other players will have the exact same plan, once the details are known, so my chances for success are very low.

I also expect guilds will form up to acquire entire villages and/or towns, to the best of their ability, and to publicly declare 'Kingsport is the property of Order of Order[OoO]! Build there at your peril!' and if they have enough co-ordination, they will likely be able to pull it off, especially if everyone is citizen+ in their guild.