Port... I was thinking ..........you might

layaway
ˈleɪəweɪ/
noun
noun: lay-away

1. 1.
   NORTH AMERICAN
   a system of paying a deposit to secure an article for later purchase.
   "she picked up a coat she had on layaway"

WOW... I never knew this existed, I had to look it up. Is it specific to North America? Thanks for exposing me to this idea @mercster .

@majoria70
I understand the advantage of this if you want to purchase something that's about to expire and you don't have disposable cash on hand.

However, most bundles aren't limited by quantity, except the ones containing the bodily fluids of developers that cost about 5 figures.

If it's used to purchase an ordinary bundle. Then saving on your own is just plain better for the player.

I can understand the allure of 0% interest installment plans, you get to enjoy the bundle early while you slowly pay it off. My concerns about irresponsible spending still stands but at least I understand the desire to suggest such an idea more since the players get to enjoy the actual content. The company has to ensure that the purchased items are bound to account until the installments are all paid up.

I can also understand the idea of monthly subs as well, provided it gave access to a large amount of items in the add-store. I wouldn't pay monthly for a game that kept so many things away from me despite a subscription. Again, the items gotten via subscription will have to be account bound, since you'll lose access to them once your subscription stopsm

The OP's Layaway idea just feels like a "how can I just randomly throw more money at port" kinda suggestion. Sorry.
It doesn't feel like something that benefits players at all (except for expiring/limited items).

Ops idea puts the player at a disadvantage. Heh. It's like the players are sitting around plotting how to screw themselves for the sake of Portalarium. It's quite amusing to me really.

TLDR: I'm not saying buying bundles is a bad idea, if you want to buy it go ahead. The layaway idea, unless utilized only for limited quantity/expiring bundle is frankly, imo, nuts.

 

To lay-away a hot limited time bundle or item I'd understand to "book" it, that you couldn't have bought with disposable cash at that point and would miss out on the deal completely.

But if lay-aways are useful for the above, I'm not sure If Port can appreciate these fund-trickling 2 year lay aways when these hot items could be sold there and then for straight up cash injection into their 500k kitty stash.

 

If it's expiring items why not? It doesn't cost them any more to copy paste the items. More people pledging to purchase an idea is great. Players who can buy it straight out will still do it, but players who can't afford it will be encouraged to buy it via layaway.

Frankly, I like @reuge 's idea the best. Why pussyfoot around the matter and just outrightly tithe a portion of your monthly salary to port?

 

Expiring items for sure it'll work as extra revenue.

And if people are willing to tithe, why not? Won't be that hard to set up.

The leader's huge house could use a couple more basements.

 

They don't keep your money with layaway.

 

I think the reason they do not do this is if the company does run into financial trouble and has to close doors or sell off. Alot of people would be like "wheres my money" And i few with a lot of money would be like "well i guess we will lawyer up then". Just a guess tho. Thats why monthly subscriptions work. Game closes and you just play that last month and then bye bye over done with.

 

This might be another approach. Have everything priced in COTO's and allow various tiers of subscriptions to COTOs. That way anyone who changes their mind can cash out in the player market at any time, Port doesn't have to return any money or have any obligation beyond the COTO subscription, and people can easily plan their long term purchases (and even supplement it with COTOs purchased in game).

 

They could cancel at any time in the former plan, so it is not a financial commitment. If you thought you could buy a POT then lost your job you cancel and all you can afford to get with your plan is the village house. You have no financial obligation beyond what you already paid. Yes they will not give back money already paid like a bank would, but they do support RMT. Sell your village to another player for what you paid (or more if it is now collectible).

Dept store layaway works the same way, put in for $10k living room set, then lose your job $1k in? You now have store credit for a lounge chair with no further obligation. It is little used anymore because they would rather you spend the $10K on the dept store high interest credit card (that jacks to 30% when you lose your ability to pay) and the greed of people that want things now rather than wait for it.

 

This came up before in a thread on COTO subscriptions (like ESO crowns) and the devs will not do it. The reason is that they want to tightly control the COTO market so that the COTO vs. Gold economy stays balanced without inflation. So far they have done a good job of controlling the price of COTO, but if everyone started buying COTOs every month instead of decorations then the COTO market would be flooded, devaluing their price in gold, and people then want more COTO for their cash, leading to inflationary spiral.

 

I voted yes though I would consider it only for items that are going to be discontinued. I am more concerned with the Pirate Bundles that @Cypher Black was talking about. Cypher maybe we should press them on this via a separate thread so we can figure out all the things we would like included. Seems we have a few pirates tracking this. R/Boris/El Pirata

 

By this logic they should close all casinos, sporting events, or anything else I may want to purchase but really cannot afford. How about the Add-On store. I can make the same stupid decisions right there and my money is gone. You that say we should be responsible adults are, or course, quite correct. "Credit", however, is now a way of life. This seems to me like a pretty good proposal.

 

oh ya man! I would love a COTO subscriptions. $15 a month and you get 20 COTO!!!

Here is the skinny. The add on store used to get new stuff every week and last time it was 3 weeks and the time before if I remember right it was 2 weeks. I like to buy stuff every week and spend a set amount, but when they changed it to every 3 weeks, I still only spend that same amount so they are not milking me for as much as they used to (Im happy with them milking me). So they need to release stuff weekly like before or maybe do a COTO subscription.

 

Thank you for the subprime America!

 

Hah, Im willing to pay additional to get access to future episodes! And for some additional love for SPO!

Open pledges back!

(especially with knowledge that even text parser will be localised in ru version)

 

Umm.... so if you saved your money on your own instead of layaway, and you lost your job, you understand that you have $1k cash instead of $1k store credit right and how that is better right? Yes the interest plan is bad as well. Both are pretty bad deals. If the item isn't limited or expiring, don't do the expensive credit or the layaway. I'm not sure why you guys want it?

This is a different argument from above.

Yes, if you only had 400, you could make a dumb decision and lose that $400, feel bad and not do it again. If the shop "saved" the money for you, you could lose thousands on a dumb decision instead. One plan allows you to possibly lose more money.

I'm not saying it'll always happen. But I'm saying that that is a logical concern isn't it? Should the company be comfortable for inviting so many people to spend this much? I wonder how the company felt when the customer who fell ill needed money? Did they consider a refund?

There isn't a need to try and extend my logic to other examples. To make it sound like I'm asking to ban more than I mentioned. I think things that could possibly make people spend more than they should like gambling, bank loans all have some form of regulation for a reason.

I'm not from the US so perhaps I'm really not understanding this due to a cultural difference. *Shrugs*

 

Of course it is better to save money than to spend money. But Portalarium is not responsible for your personal finances, they are in the biz of selling collectibles, like it or not they pitched this to investors as Ultimate Collector 2.0 after 1.0 failed. That makes them no different than accumulating store credit at the wargame or fantasy figures store, where people can easily spend $-$$k on building a collection. As a biz it makes absolute sense for them to hold your money for that POT instead of asking you to save it on the risk that you might spend it at the wargame store. Anyone that runs a biz knows that cash flow is king, $1k/mo is much better than $12k/yr! This is not a non-profit charity!

But it is not like you would lose that money - you still got the lesser tier pledge once you backed and because they support RMT you can easily get your money back or more although you do risk the company going out of biz. The reason this plan cannot work as it was is they got rid of pledge tiers incorporating prior tier rewards - because like me people were dumping villages they got for 'free' on the market so villages was not valued as a collectible. and they could not justify their $$$ price which they needed to be making since they had tapped the $-$$K market. It is better for them to reinvent them plan using a store currency now that pledges are not tiers (not layaway cash for accounting reasons and not COTOS for game economy reasons)

As to why someone would want to do spend money like this? It is just like public radio you are making a pledge to fund their continuing existence and getting a trinket in return. Giving them that money once you saved it up later does not help them now. Now you don't have to like that they chose the biz model of collectibles for pledges, but the reality is that model works very well for public radio and is just an expansion of the way kickstarter works. Yes ti turns people off but as long as it turns more people on, it works.

Now one could also argue it is dumb to spend money on digital trinkets rather than physical trinkets. But that argument went out the window about the same time physical music and movies did, people are used to owning digital media for over a decade so digital goods are the same thing in their mind. Yes the servers might shut off and they will lose their stuff, but they pay for convenience now not permanence later.

 

Nope you got a lesser tier pledge, you still got something for your lesser money paid. Port does not get free money, they still owe you digital goods once you cancel. Port just lost future projected income is all, but their expense of making the golden castle is not more than the golden tabletop version - it is not like you was paying an artist on layaway to do something and you lost all your money because they did not finish.

 

I'm not arguing that. I gladly spend a lot on games and I feel fine if I stop or if the game dies. It's just my entertainment money. I totally understand the allure of digital trinkets. I'm not against people spending money on digital stuff. I'm not even against people with more money spending tons on supporting the company. It's your money.

What I'm against is, despite the already large financial support that players are putting up in support of the company (200+K burn a month?) there are actually players coming up with really disadvantageous financing plans (layaways) to encourage others to spend more money on the game to support the game.

Instead of just asking for more cool things to buy, or asking for lowered prices so more people can chip in and purchase things and get cool stuff. The players are asking for things that in my opinion, screw other players. And surprisingly, while the voices are relatively few, there are actually more supporters of this idea than not.

If most people actually find this okay, this could purely be a cultural or personal difference that I cannot easily understand.

 

Portalarium once supported payment plans for Pledges and Player Owned Towns. They stopped the practice... I don't recall the reason for cessation, however I do recall that it was pretty firmly stated that it wouldn't be returning.

 

They removed it when pledges and POTs ended.

It takes dev time to keep that functioning for all the different payment methods, plus it costs a lot in fees with each transaction making it less profitable. IIRC it was 10-15% extra.

But I think it was planned to come back in the future™.

However @tphilipp has been very busy with other tasks lately so the likelyhood of him having a spare moment would be low.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/standup-corner.2315/page-50

*lets dig up some semi official quote*