PETITION/POLL: Please Portalarium put a hard cap on sales of Player Owned Towns

Can we please move to organic pricing. I suggested this a very long time ago. When a POT is purchased the price goes up for the next one. Problem solved.

Im not going to take the time to explain, again, why this works as a marketing miracle.

Im looking forward to buying towns on the cheap from the wasteland and doing a rehab on them to sell lots.

 

I suggest $100-150 increments for Metros down to $10-20 for holdfasts.

 

I think moving to this form of pricing NOW makes sense since we've hit a milestone of (230 POTs). I can understand wanting to keep a revenue stream open. I can also understand wanting to give new players an opportunity to own a player town. But I think beginning future sales items starting with "organic pricing" that increases per sale is probably not the best idea. I'd like to see it based on time or quantity of items before the price increases. Something like "we have 1000 Oracle Head Statues in the add-on store. Buy them now before the price increases 20%". Something like that.

In the case of POTs, I think increasing the price now makes sense. Then say every 50 POTs you increase it again. I'd probably increase it by 20% each time.

 

To be perfectly honest.....given the number of PoTs that have been sold and that they are still selling them................I can hand on heart really advise people instead of buying a PoT just go to the following website:

https://www.moonestates.com/

Its LOT cheaper and will be equally as empty!

 

There are a number of reasons that empty POTs will exist.

1. The slow drip of lot deeds. The devs are going to control how many lot deeds enter the game organically (via a lottery or whatever). This will drive sales of lot deeds in the add-on store which will most certainly be the "best" and "fastest" way to get a lot deed.
2. The server population of ACTIVE players. This will be determined by how good the game is and nothing else. If Archeage can get 1 million people, we should be able to get 200k. If 20% of that is regularly active, that's about 40k people. That's actually quite a bit when you realize that we're playing a selective multiplayer game. What's that mean? It means that only 100 to 200 people will EVER be in the same scene at any given time. So regardless of how big your POT is or how big you want an event to be, you're capped at about 200 people before a new instance of that scene is created. So "feeling like a ghost town" is only going to happen where people are actually in a town that no one wants to be in.
3. The lack of "attractions" to make people want to be in your POT. Let's face it, the ACTION is outside of POTs. There are no resources to mine, there are no monsters to kill (maybe in an invasion or siege?) and there's really nothing to do but shop at a player vendor, craft items, or goto a player run event. These things can't sustain a 24/7 environment. It's hard to imagine a 40k active player base filling every POT so that it doesn't look like a ghost town based on what we've seen so far.
4. Not being a "ghost town" involves seeing other players doing "stuff" and being able to talk or interact with other players in that town. In other words, Roleplaying. And that's really where we need to put our efforts when we design these POTs. If they're just masses of land out in the middle of no where, there's no incentive to go there and roleplay. It doesn't matter if there's 1 POT or 250. Pax Lair, Port Phoenix, Vengeance, they're all "ghost towns" right now - and that's the reason because roleplaying requires multiple people, and there's not enough "reasons" for multiple people to goto a POT an interact.

So yes, these are all problems that need to be accounted for and in some cases worked on, but I'm not ready to freak out about it. We're not buying land on the moon. We're buying opportunities to roleplay, and the developers just need to build an environment that supports that.

 

I actually remember you suggesting this when there was only 50 or so POTs sold. Even then Port was talking about capping sold POTs to around 75-100 to better avoid urban sprawl.

 

I could buy nearly 500 acres on the Moon for what ive spent on PoTs.........I expect the reaction from people would be similar....ie they would think i'm crazy.

The point is PoTs are now being oversold to the point that it's becoming irresponsible.

We can all speculate on the numbers that might end up playing.....I prefer to deal more with certainty and what i'm seeing at the moment would suggest that my glasses are not as rose tinted as yours.

 

Don't mistake my point of view as being "we shouldn't restrict POTs". I agree, having an unlimited amount would be very troubling. I'm just not ready to say that 230 vs. 250 is a big deal. I voted to restrict POTs to 250 in the poll.

I think the more I think about it though, Portalarium should do the same thing they're doing with player housing....use a lottery system and slow drip new POTs.

The point I was trying to make in my last post was that I believe the problem of "ghost towns" has a lot to do with all those other factors and not much to do with how many POTs we end up having. I think the underlining issue of "why do people even need to goto a POT" is the much larger concern here.

 

I've never understood why everyone and their brother wants a town. I think it is an impulse purchase and a detriment to the game at the current numbers of POTs out there.

POT owners who don't take managing their towns seriously are going to be in a world of hurt.

 

I can't attest to why other people want a town. I got one because I wanted to live in the type of city that I'm creating and I didn't think it would exist unless I made it myself.

I don't know of another game where you can have your own town with this level of customization and control. There are a number of games that let you have a town that looks and feels exactly like all the other towns in the game. The towns are very static and the controls are mostly designed to support guilds. Where I think SOTA POTs are very different is that they are more an expression of the players that own them, and they give players real power to control their environments as they see fit. The idea that the POT owner is "in charge" is a unique one that other games don't really allow for. Usually other games have ways that the town can be taken from the owner and the towns look and feel as if they're extensions of the game and the players are simply "renting" the space. Where as SOTA really makes town owners feel as if they "own" the town. That's a very important distinction.

So to answer your questions, I think that distinction is probably a very attractive reason to own a town and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's driving all the sales.

 

TBH I've thought of buying a POT, not to use at launch necessarily but just to have one in my pocket in case I wanted to develop one later. Probably there are others with similar thinking.

 

I can only answer for myself.
I've said this before.
It's a way to have remote housing, in an area I create and control.
I considered whether I really wanted to spend this money for several months before purchasing. Hardly an impulse purchase.
Hardly a detriment to the game. I think you are blind to the motivations of people that don't match your own.
It's not a business for me. What I do with my town does no harm, and does not impact your game at all.

 

Completely agree on an individual basis. However collectively and due to the direction that is being taken; lots of harm is being done that will only truly become apparent when it is far too late and irreversible.

 

I predict that in the near future, the sky above my head which is black shall turn blue.

Could you explain what direction is being taken by whom and what harm shall be apparent, perhaps before it is too late and irreversible???

 

Why would you ask for a thread to be locked? If you don't want to read the responses, don't read the responses.

Censorship is not the answer.

 

It's a digital world. It's reversible. People have contacted Port to melt down their towns into credit. As long as this remains a viable option then the sky is not falling.

POT owners should be able to make their POT hidden on the overland and should be able to melt it down to credits if they can't manage it.

 

toxic threads snd posts are not productive either. you can be critical and not tocic/ofensive.

 

I fully agree, I bought my POT a month after there release in 2014 thinking wow I made the cut and my investment in this game (Richard rules) $2000 is ALOT of money for the average person to allocate to a game development but as I said an investment. My town renters will be my revenue on top of it being a farming crafting town I expect a lot of gold to go through and upgrade the town with those funds. now there over 200???????? are half the towns going to be ghost towns thus the $900 us I spent ($1143 Canadian that I am) is for what? Its no longer money I didn't have that I invested it wasted its nothing special everyone and there dog has. im now longer going to have a fair chance to get renters thus no upgrading....very disappointing. you guys took it too far especially if I don't get overland map access I will lose it. should be caped at 200 if not less that's actually a stupid number how many NPC towns per continent? so are POT the new Housing as per ultima there was hundreds. if your walking down the road is it going to be house, house , town, house ,town town, town, house, town ,town??I believe in this game and in Richard ,Chris and the awesome staff but common . the ratio of my 2000 invested is like Bill Gates 1.7 billion invested. that is all for now sry rant

 

So when something is sold which has a finite number, it actually has a value. In terms of PoTs that number should have probably been somewhere in the region of 100-150......not to the extent where the the map ends up looking like a 20 year old pub dartboard. Throw into the mix that PoTs are no longer finite despite no more space being available on the map then there value begins to plummet. Then start thinking about future funding, if current PoTs are oversold, who in their right mind would even think about buying one for the new lands that open. Overselling now will create issues later on.