New Pledge Rewards, New Pledge Tiers, Player Owned Towns & Stretch Goal Store Megapost

True. Nevertheless, perhaps the biggest change will be caused by the increased number of character slots.

Regardless of the fact that some players have multiple accounts, the single-slot format meant that the trade in crafted items and services would have been essential to most characters.

Now, with three slots, you can do pretty much everything yourself and just constantly pass stuff to your different characters via chests.

So, crafted-trading will take a big hit.

I think that's a shame. The crafted-trading was looking like a great part of the game. Now, no matter what, it will be less.

It was mentioned that a player poll voted very much in favour of one-slot-per-account, but this seems to have been ignored? Portalarium don't seem to care about this hit to game-play, and it seems that that's because they can sell more slots?

Shouldn't the game-play be the most important thing?

 

I am totally PUMPED I can't wait to see the New Pledge Rewards really...
I'm going to upgrade I don't know for sure to what yet like Bodhbh Deargh said "i'm very visually oriented"
so I have to see and the closer the time gets the more excited i'm getting...
I am so grateful to Richard Garriot and Starr and the entire Dev team for bringing this game to life.
i'm in my well 50's and really have a GREAT time on the weekend R's
I remember when the UO days were happening it was sooo involving I did live there play there.
And know well I have so much more time to and a few more bucks to play with (hence the name Bimmer)
I just want to give a big shout out to the whole team of THANKS REALLY THANKS
I also know there has been a lot of back and forth bickering about this and that...
I want this game to go go GO GO for a long time. Look at UO it's still out there you can see it on Twitch i've watched yet.
you can still play it I do.
Just want to dump a little
Respectfully
Thanks Guys
Bill

 

Time is the limiting factor.
You can be an average craftsman that can do everything, but nothing really good, or you can be a specialist.
I will not waste my time by doing everything myself.
I dont want to be an average worker.
I'll specialize and be one of the best in my profession.

 

They actually used wanting players to be forced to interact with each other as a justification for shooting down a lot of requests pertaining to being self sufficient. Be interesting to see if those ideas are revisited now.

 

Whether or not you "jump into the skin of another Avatar" your skills jump with you, yet your affinity for this or that skill will be effected.
*(I believe that this is the current thinking, correct me if I'm wrong "I was in the Mega Dev+ post")*

The concept is that "You are the Avatar" no matter what skin you are in. Your karma is the karma of whatever other character you have extra. "It's not exactly another character, "it's another skin you can jump into".
So remember, "You are the Avatar"
~Time Lord~

 

I will echo some earlier sentiments and say that (the great new tier/reward system notwithstanding) such dramatic changes to the business model are of concern to me. I suspect that to make the game that everyone seems to be talking about here in the forums, the project will need to solicit some big-time external investment at some point. If the scope remains a few initial systems that work well as a baseline, then maybe a crowd sourced game is viable. Feature creep seems to be happening already and the price tag is going beyond what can be sustained by the community alone. I want to invest more - I'm very excited for this game - but am hesitant. Some transparency in the financial health of the game would be nice...

 

Just a side thought that I haven't seen discussed (sorry if I missed it).

Could the player towns be put on a payment plan?

 

I absolutely love the addition of the row housing. Everyone should have a place to call home and even if you can't afford to pledge up to the row, I'm sure it will be easier to earn in the game as well.

I do have one question--> performance in these areas of the game would be fantastic due to all the culling that these closely packed streets could provide? Is this because they block the draw distance? Sorry if off topic.

 

I'm really excited about these changes and additions -- particularly the addition of the Player Owned Towns capabilities.

• When we built PaxLair back in January 1998 in Old Britannia (UO), it started as a bit of a land rush where houses were spread around a few meadows. Some people with houses were citizens of the town while others weren't. We rarely saw some house owners if ever. We had to identify which houses were "part of PaxLair" with web maps and items placed on doorsteps or having a common house sign.
• It took about 2 years for house positions and ownership to stabilize for the area to really feel like a town or city.
• We also had enemies move into PaxLair when a house dropped and we could not place a house fast enough. ( Remember the old IDOC [In Danger of Collapse] days and being the first to place a house on the open lot? Stay hidden long enough to place the house before someone else, then die quickly at the hand of others, but at least you placed the house! )

The images below show this history.

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PaxLair City in UO (1999) - about 50% of the houses have citizens of the city.​

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PaxLair City in UO (2004) - about 70% of the houses are part of the City.​

There are also a few houses owned by enemies of PaxLair leading to some dark times.​

So the ability to do some city planning before and after the land rush is a great help (actually a huge help and will save hundreds of hours and months when trying to establish a town and the resident citizenry). The city planning and flexibility is enabled by being able to lock and unlock lots for people to place houses. We can even work together to help people swap house locations like "Oh, I am going to be gone for a few months ... I want to move my house to the lot in the corner and let someone else use my lot by the docks. But when I come back, I'd like to have my dock lot back again please." ... and the benevolent owner of the Player Town can help make that happen.

 

They haven't said yet. Could also help.

 

Considering how much they cost I really think it would be a smart idea for Portalarium to allow this. A lot of people can't afford to pay $750 or more up front but could afford it if they could spread it out over several months.

 

Is this the poll you are talking about? Because it was "One Account, One Character. Are you cool with that?" I was cool with that so I voted yes. If they had asked "One Account, Two Characters. Are you cool with that?" I would have also voted yes. I'm pretty much cool to play whatever game Portalarium designs and would play regardless of how many characters I could make. I'm delighted I get to provide feedback during it's creation, but ultimately I have played a lot of games that I enjoy where I wasn't part of the creation process.

They did suggest at one point that TIME was the limiting factor, not skill points. I remember seeing there was no plan for a hard cap per say but that players wouldn't have time to max everything. And while many people might make 3 characters, which with caps may not enough to specialize in every discipline, even without caps they may not have time to max every tier.

Many people who play will purchase the game - not pre-pledge to 2nd and 3rd character slots. Even if you have maxed your characters through to 5 gathering, 5 refining and 5 crafting levels I would imagine you are further limited in having to spend all that time gathering, refining and crafting. I just don't think extra character slots are going to have the huge impact you are expecting on crafting.

 

Even though I expect an email and announcement I keep checking the pledge and add-on store pages

 

Is this going in today sometime?

 

That's the plan. I wouldn't be spectacularly surprised if it gets pushed back, though. Just be patient. It doesn't really matter anyway. When it does come out, it won't make a lick of difference if people upgrade right then or wait three months.

 

Supposed to - I want to see all the "image coming soon" rewards!

 

Me too.

 

I suspect we will see more once the Friday update is out.

 

So far they've only said purchased with in-game currency. (that can be gold or items) However, it's fairly easy to make a quest out of it as well. Where you round people (NPCs) up who are looking for a new life in a new town, and then you stake your claim in a flagged available hex and it opens up the town to you and the NPCs walk in and setup shop.

They might not have the details worked out yet. This level of detail generally isn't given to the public because things change as they see how well things work internally. That is one of the hazards of the open development they are doing. This development level is usually reserved for inside info only, not for the public.

 

I take it you've never been to an online in-game item store. Many people even spend thousands of dollars for in-game items/characters. It's a huge market. It exists in all online games. I remember Diablo 2 level 80 characters selling for hundreds of dollars. Someone paid I think it was 10,000 for a character in WOW. I've spent hundreds of dollars on other games (UO, WoW, FFXI, Diablo 3)