Open Letter to Mr. Garriott - the pay to play thing

CCP? How does that system work?

 

Hey, thank you for all the comments. It is not "pay 2 win" the email letter from seedinvest says "buy 2 play".
I personaly also love the sandbox decoration thing a lot but also the fighting thing. But when i have to "grind" or farm for month every evening to reach a small goal, that makes me sick. If your feel that your ingame progress gets eaten up by a system that on the one hand prefers people who have all the time in the world to play the game and on the other side those people who pay lots of money.... where is the space for the old ultima veterans, who have a family and a job ? If i play regulary a view hours a week (les say for example 4-6) i want to enjoy the game for gods sake. i have no time for repetetive harvesting on ultra low output, i want to reach something ingame - without paying money. The actual economics really kills the fun for gamers like me. - Yes i can play offline, but in UO things were a lot more attractive than in sota, and i dont want to play offline. When i fight well armed monsters, and they really challenge me and; i get most of the time 20gp and a rusty sword.... what is that ? Monsters in general dont wear armor ? And yes everything is allways in bad condition or rusty.... My fun just got killed again.... - The thing i say is: if sota continiues like that, it becomes realy unatractive to me. I dont want that! One of the great things about UO was the decoration thing - it was fun, people loved it got creative as hell it was so cool. Here you have to pass the paywall again and again and again....
Don't forget please: i am here because i love the ultima games and ultima online. I am not here to visit a virtual furniture shop.

 

Got it, thanks

So your definition of P2Win involves mainly the combat aspect of the game. Getting a powerful character is probably your end game and mine is getting a nice house. I guess our views here differ since our end game is different. Thanks for clarifying.

I personally think bans are effective ways to stop such things if companies really wanted to discourage them. But again, financial realities.

I'm not asking for the company to do that. I'm really don't care about people power leveling in this game

 

What stops someone from getting a nice house without paying real money? Nothing.

I had nice houses on my vendor. I'll have more on there soon.

There are multiple vendors that I'm aware of selling deeds (even tax free) and whatever houses you want for in game gold right now. The prices are completely reasonable too, as they're dictated by the time vs. money exchange rate that the entire economy runs off of.

I don't see any problem here. What I do see is that some people just can't get past the part about a person being able to buy it quickly for real money. But again, that happens in every MMO that allows item acquisition and trading (regardless of what the stated policy is). And it's really unfortunate that people make a big deal about this as if it's a show stopper since it has zero impact on them individually or collectively. It's simply the reality that we live in. It's a lot like saying you (not you personally but figuratively) don't like that we have to breathe air.

 

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying three things:

1. You don't like the grind because you have limited time to play.
2. You don't like the add-on store because you feel it's a pay wall that requires you to spend money.
3. You don't like the poor loot tables that result in you getting a bunch of rusty swords.

I think you have some valid concerns here, but I also think that you're uninformed as to the impact and depth of these points.

1. The grind is very real, especially as you get up to level 80 on your skills or level 50 on your adventure level. I'm not a fan of the grind, I've proposed many alternatives and it's probably something that at this point is going to be here for good. The positive in all of this however is that the adventurer levels don't mean anything in pvp or pve (not now anyway, they used to), and so what this really means is that there's a lack of content (so that it doesn't get boring fighting the same thing over and over again). That's something the developers agree with and are working to resolve. It's just going to take time.
2. There's nothing in this game that you can't get for in-game gold. There are players that will sell you anything for in-game gold. So if you truly "put the time in" you don't ever have to buy anything for real money. So it's on you if you're unwilling to buy from player vendors and use large amounts of in-game gold. There's no problem with the game design, it doesn't force you to buy anything in the store, ever. If there's something you want, go out and find a player that will sell it to you. But yeah, it's going to cost you time that you don't have a lot of. If you don't have time OR money, well that's a problem but what's your solution? The devs need money to make the game, and time has value too (which you obviously get because you have a lack of it).
3. The developers are working on making the loot tables better so they reward players more frequently. However, what's really the problem here is likely that you haven't discovered the best places to go in the game yet. There are a lot of places where you can make gold or get gems or resources or whatever you need, but of course this takes time and if you haven't developed your character enough (perhaps because of a lack of time) you'll probably need to group up with someone to make efficient use of your time.

I hope this helps some. I'm understanding of your position, and it's actually very easy for me to put myself in your shoes because 1. I have a family and a job. 2. I prefer to play solo. 3. I like to have fun as much as anyone does, and if you're not getting a lot back from your playing experience then it's obviously not going to be much fun. But I do have a lot of fun and it's because the things you mentioned are not problems for me. Not because I have a ton of money or time (I really don't), but because my understanding of the game has made it so I don't have these roadblocks.

 

CCP is Eve, a time dependent levelling system. It isn't prefect, but it mitigates powerlevelling, XP grinding and paying to level.

 

Thanks.

I like the sound of that, and yes I understand that it's not perfect, but I would have a concern that players with too much time would dominate and I think that's an unattractive design. We have too much of that here now, imo. I have suggested in the past that there be a daily cap on how much XP you could earn, but that was met with a chorus of boos from the folks that seem to think it's ok to use your time to get power but not your money. I find the whole argument that "I put my time in" to be very hypocritical and short sighted.

 

What stops me from stops me buying a furniture for a nice house is the same thing that stop you from buying XP.

The feeling of achievement you get the a powerful character comes from the challenges you overcame leveling up your character, or slaying the dragon to get the loot you were hoping for. The feeling of achievement I could get from crafting and building the furniture in my house wouldn't be met if it was bought. There isn't an end game if it could be bought immediately.

So when I share our opinions about the housing stuff, while I understand your intentions in suggesting that we can just buy things to create a nice house is shared out of logic, I hope you can understand my point of view and why I would not be a "fan" of that. It would be like me asking what's stopping you from just buying XP?

That being said, I do own a house and have bought stuff from the add-on store to decorate it. I share my views in hope the this experience can be improved for the sake of the game (and of course my personal selfish pleasure of wishing for a game that I could enjoy ) and hope the community understand that we share the same wish of SotA being a good game.

 

I will take a derivative of this. I either like to make stuff myself -Or- buy them from my friends and guildies in game first. I farm a lot of gold, me putting a lot of time into it which I trade to my friends for their time crafting items for my house. That way, I see my name on the deco or my friends name. But in the end, I know I earned the gold for it myself.

 

You're close, but in my case I don't spend any time thinking about or worrying about people that pay for a leveled character. It's not my preference, but it doesn't spoil the game for me in any way.

I choose not to buy XP in part because I love being able to say "yeah, I put the time in" especially when I argue that there's too much grind in this game. Unlike furniture though, Portalarium is not selling levels or experience. The game is also designed to make levels over 100 have a soft power cap that reduces the likelihood that someone level 140 will dominate someone that is level 100. It's not ideal, but it's not pay to win.

You're confusing pay to win with what players do outside of the design of the game though. It's like saying that if Portalarium only allowed one character per account they should ban all payers that use a secondary account. It's not practical for many reasons, even though I truly wish they were able to do that (for many reasons).

 

Communication hasn't changed in 4 years. 6 months from now I expect communication will look identical to the way it does today. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm not betting on it.

 

I would like to think that they would take extra steps to communicate properly during the important marketing phases on the horizon.

 

Apologies if I'm wrong, but I get the impression from your reply you are thinking of skills increasing linked to playing time - as I understand the EVE model, it is a bit different, you gain skills over time simply by having an account. There are many things you can do in playing time to increase all sorts of things, gain access to some new skills and so on, but there's essentially always some sort of gain going on in the background, whether you are playing or not. Now of course that has other downsides and benefits too ...

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203217062-Skills-and-Skill-Queue explains it pretty well.

 

I would like to think that too, but I know better. I can only hear the same promises of improving communication so many times and believe they truly aim to improve. Again, I hope I'm wrong and they actually make good on their numerous promises to improve communication. Time will tell.

 

Oooh, we are so close to a breakthrough let's put the pay to win term aside for a moment. Let's put it in terms of gameplay and achievement.

I know you enjoy the game. That's totally fine. Because unlike furniture, Portal isn't selling levels and or experience. Which allows you play the combat game to advance your character. There is game mechanics that allow you to advance to your end game without having to face a pay wall.

Let me flip the sentence around. Unlike levels and experience, Portal IS selling furniture. No amount of game play through crafting will allow me to advance to the point I can craft the store items. Which, in turn, lowers my satisfaction.

Remember, taken in the context of both our different end games.

I could fight mobs to gain gold to buy them items from people, that brings us back the weird dissatisfaction of a master craftsman having to buy someone which (in my opinion) should be within his ability to craft.

I'm not asking you to lower your love for the game. You can love a game but still understand why someone else could find it flawed or lacking. Understanding and acknowledging another player's point of view does not invalidate your personal belief in the game.

Which is why I hope you and the community can undersrand and empathize with the OP's point of view without dismissing his concerns even if you don't share it.

 

I have a friend who's a crafter and his personal satisfaction is lowered because he has to individually pay for recipes instead of just "figure them out". It very much upsets him because logically if you know how to make iron ingots you should be able to substitute copper and make copper ingots. Yet the game requires players to pay for some recipes individually before they can learn them. It's not an arbitrary design choice, there were reasons for this decision.

So sure, I understand your satisfaction is lowered by this, but much like my friend I can't see why this requires pages and pages of discussion or that it's even brought up repeatedly at all. It's not that big of a deal. Not just for me, but for anyone that can see the forest from the trees.

There has to be trade offs, and when you consider the full impact, this isn't much of an issue.

 

Heh. "Can't see the forest for the trees" is very apt.

I shared my view so you can step back and see the bigger picture instead if just combat. See that a sandbox mmo has to be more than just it's combat. There is a segment of the game that's lacking. The community should work together to enact positive change.

 

I'm all in favor of changes that make the game better. But not at the expense of Portalarium's ability to generate funding for continued development. It's very easy to look at your playing style and ignore others. I'm aware you're accusing me of doing that to you. However, that's not the case. What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense to stop collecting add-on store money from furniture so that full time crafters can "feel" better about their ability to craft. Portalarium has already given crafters items that can not be duplicated in the store and can only be crafted in-game. Of course those too can be purchased with real money (just like in any MMO).

The lack of flexibility is really what the problem is here. I understand you're not satisfied that a few items are only available in the store (many of which are simply variations of the same thing you can craft), but that's a very weak argument vs. allowing the game to continue development. And please don't say that they could simply sell something else and not furniture, because the same argument you're making could be used for that something else until there's nothing being sold, the game is forced to shut down, and everyone's feeling are dismissed collectively. Not a great solution in my opinion.

Obviously we'll have to agree to disagree here. I think my stance is clear and well articulated for anyone that would like to explore the argument.

 

I agree with the rest of what you said except this slippery slope fallacy bit.

Im sorry if you felt I was accusing you, i really couldn't resist the word play since you implied that you and anyone who could see the forest for the trees would see that our point of view wasn't a big deal. Heh.

 

It's different. How do you sell or trade items in mmo that are binded to players? Nobody are forced to do anything. But they can p2w here.

In comparison, the latest game in the pipeline ashes of creation also offer housing option. Houses can't be bought from add on. Pledge items are binded such that they cannot be traded for distinct advantage in game. So this is in fact different than any other mmo. It's not right to say all mmo are the same.