Portalarium Currency Sales (Please Read) -- (Dev) Replied

This will be very controversial in this player base but I really believe you guys need to give the option to players to buy in game currency from Portalarium for USD.

Here is my reason for suggesting this, lately a ton of games have been completely ruined by gold farmers Diablo 3, Lineage 2, AoC, and many more. However, this is completely preventable I will show 2 working models in the industry that have been a huge deterrence on this behavior.

There are 2 leading industry approaches to handling this issue, the first is the WoW model - BoP (Binds on Pickup) so basically in WoW all the best drops and all good gear is Bind on Pickup meaning when you character physically loots an item it is bound to you, you cannot sell it or buy anything that is BoP so this effectively devalues gold to a high extent, pair this with large gold rewards from quest givers and you have a very gold farmer resistant game.

However, this really would not work for Shroud of the Avatar or any sandbox game, because it is very immersion breaking and goes 100% against sand box play style where everything can be worn, bought, or sold.

So the next industry approach, let's call it the Eve Online approach - is for the company to sell currency themselves, this gives the company more money to make an even more fabulous game, and at the same time cutting out any profit gold farmers could make off farming and selling currency. Put it this way would you rather be supporting a game studio, or a group of 20 people in garage playing 16 hours a day....

This can actually give a market more depth so here is my example lets say your currency is called "British Bucks" this is what all players earn during gameplay. I however, am a lazy player that would buy from gold farmers; however, that takes work and is a hassle - thankfully I can just buy my currency from Portalarium.

So, I go on the Portalarium website and for 15 USD I can buy one "British Gold Bar". Well this is not "British Bucks" so what do I do with it?

Alright so there are a few options you can do with this gold bar to give it an actual monetary value:

1. You can sell it to an NPC to always get 1 million "British Bucks."
2. You can change your characters visual appearance by buying vanity items only available from "British Gold Bars."
3. You can buy a new class/skill tree that gets released that would retail for 14.99 USD.
4. You can sell the "British Gold Bar" on the normal market.

Since you have given the "British Gold Bar" a real life value by allowing players to buy vanity items and character expansions. I could probably get 3 million from another player for my 15$ forcing me to be a part of the Economy and giving both of us something we want from the game. Basically Portalarium just made 15 USD off content and sold that content to a F2P player that may not want to spend real money in game. At the same time the player that just paid 15 USD still has not bought that content, with this approach Portalrium can leverage paying customers into effectively paying for multiple expansions for multiple players.

The player that is fine spending money got his wish of a lot of currency without any work, and will most likely be back to buy expansion content and more money once his 3 million is gone.

On the other side of the trade table, the player that will not spend real life money gets his "British Gold Bar" after spending 3 Million "British Bucks" and gets to enjoy new expansion content, and is very happy.

Basically with this model you block gold farmers, Portalrium and Shroud of the Avatar make significantly more money off this monetization model, and believe me we are in a Capitalist Environment in the gaming industry... If Portalrium does nto make the money you can be sure a SotAGold dot com will pop up to make the money. I would much rather have Portalarium make the money.

 

Good thoughts. Thanks.

 

Umm, why do people want pay to win? which is LITERALLY what this would be

There is another approach, you make selling gold a breach of the TOS and if reported for it the player is deleted and the players take some responsibility and NOT BUY FROM THEM

 

If only it was that easy @ Sir Asguard you realize that blizzard has a whole 16 man department focused towards gold sellers on World of Warcraft and multiple economists that work on the platform... However, do a google search for WoW gold sellers. Matter of fact pick any game currency you will find gold sellers, I have insight into this industry from my current employment.

For every game it is a breach of the ToS that is nothing new and in ever game it is ban able yet it is 100% ineffective, and these are purchase the game, and pay monthly fees! Shroud of the Avatar is only the cost of the box... just embrace pay to win it is in the gaming world to stay..

Just like marijuana you can either buy it from the shady dude down the street. Which also infringes the ToS of the USA ... lol. (gold sellers)

Or you can buy it from dispensaries and actually collect taxes on it. And cut out anyone from breaking the law - also there is a huge benefit for the game developer to monitor gold sellers since it cuts into their revenue at that point vs. sucking all there revenue by having GM's only focused on gold sellers and spamming and not on QA and Player Support.( better for everyone)

 

pay to win would be a breach of the legal contract they have with us as there backers because they told us (before we invested) that the game would NOT be pay to win, would be buy to play

 

Get on board man this is 2013.

People play how they want to play, just like they do everything else you will spend more time and money trying to regulate and control things that really dont give a damn... then to just embrace them with open arms and add them to the business model...

Look at the US Drug Enforcement Agency... spend billions to stop marijuana sales... people still get it easily, the states that finally accept marijuana make tons of tax revenue.

There is a modern day example.

And it is "Buy to Play," you buy the game and install it you can play it!

 

@Monkus - Really good points to consider that make a lot of sense. I agree that by making it very easy to purchase in game currency, the economic sense of creating a gold farming sweatshop is completely destroyed...and in a way that requires no labor-intensive efforts by Portilarium. Your points about controlling the value of currency via what it can be spent on (e.g. vanity game content and access to skill classes) is clever too as even if you spend hundreds of dollars on billions of gold there are only so many vanity items, provisions, reagents, conventional weapons (arrows, swords) and other stuff you can actually carry and store. In fact storing all that gold would likely be difficult. I mean lets get real, what use is a backpack stuffed with gold when you're a long way down a dungeon and you're getting your butt kicked, or running long quests or just generally exploring. In real life you can turn up at a small mom and pop shop in a country town and have $10k and its no more useful to you than carrying $100.

IMO as long as Portilarium don't get greedy or crazy by selling 'instant resurrection', 'extra lives' well-advanced characters, crowsbows behaving like RPG's or miniguns or kill anything type spells then I can only see it enhancing the game.

Take me for example - like many I work really long days, have gone back to college do further studies a couple nights a week and lucky to have a wonderful wife with whom I love to spend time with on the weekends. However *I have* to have my gaming/reading/movie time a few nights a week to disconnect, relax and revitalize *BUT* I want it all too (yeah I'm greedy) I want to be able to play RPG's without spending three hours baking bread to buy swords, chopping and fletching to make arrows, slaying 50 mongbats to buy some new armor. I want to adventure, explore, and enjoy without worrying as much about making/getting gold. Some gamers love chopping trees all night, some love filling 5 pack horses with ore (and that's great) but its not for me. I would like a headstart on taming for example so I don't have to tame 125 chickens to tame a pet dog. And if my money is going to Portilarium instead of some dude on ebay overseas in a rpg sweatshop then that makes me 100% happier.

Don't get me wrong, being able to buy items and skills and other stuff that is normally only available by participating deep in the story or with mastered skills is a *very* bad idea and yes, you would just be buying your way through the game like extra hints in Angry Birds. However I believe this type of issue doesn't even need to be considered with Portilarium as I think their hearts and priorities are completely different and focused on a rich, fulfilling game that will connect with people deeply.

I've definitely convinced myself that buying in-game content to complement your experience, which at the same time helps Portilarium would work really well.

...just had to add I'm sure many of us have upgraded our pledges to get that extra skill, extra feature, personal NPC, bigger house, etc...now I know its not the same as buying gold for in-game use *however* it does show that thousands of us are more than happy to pony up the cash for some nice in-game content (and prestige) to advance us along...and it's not a negative aspect at all

 

Goldfarming is a huge issue... and a huge issue/risk that this game would face. I personally do not think it is preventable, but that it can potentially be somewhat curbed instead...

Theoretically the only way that Portalarium, when acting as a seller itself of in game currency, can prevent the gold farmers is to undercut the gold farmers' real life selling price of in-game currency (ie: sell in game currency for less than the goldfarmers). This itself would be a potential problem in that to maintain a low price to keep goldfarmers away, Portalarium itself would end up having a similar effect on the in-game economy as a gold farmer. I kind of like Monkus' idea with the gold bars etc. Although it doesn't exactly fix the problem, it is at least something to add more depth.

I hate the idea of pay-to-win... I miss the old UO style economy before the duping started and before the days of competitive goldfarming. However I agree that those days are gone (mainly because people from the LDCs now have greater access to computers and online games). For an online game with its own economy, goldfarming will always be a problem and although I myself do not generally purchase virtual currency, I too would prefer to give my real life dollars to Sota.

 

I am very much against pay-to-win type models though I recognize that gold farming is an issue.

So why not remove the emphasis on gold?

One of the main problems is that gold is easy to get in many games. Kill stuff, loot it. Keep going. It's like a tap that is always turned on. But why should everything drop gold? Why should much of anything?

Why not encourage more of a barter economy where the value shifts from currency to trade goods (lumber, ore, reagents, herbs, cooking ingredients, metal, etc), whose own value will fluctuate according to supply and demand.

Currency could be retained as a convenient system of exchange but maybe coins are something players have to make and mint themselves.

I don't know if it would help fix the problem but I think it is worth taking a more creative approach than "well we can't stop 'em u guyz so just buy it on our site for $15 per 100k".

 

I like the idea of a barter system. It would give more reasons to craft items.

 

The idea of focusing on barter system is a nice but economies tend to struggle when its difficult to value goods easily. The particular issue in this case will be the vast amount of NPC transactions - how do you trade with an NPC if items aren't exchanged for currency? The time and complexity required to set value rules for human-NPC transactions would make it nonviable (how could you define what items your NPC will accept in exchange for other items)? When people want stuff and they can afford it they want it yesterday...so everyone would likely end up using currency anyway just because its easy.

Hmmmmmm difficult but very important game design issue.

 

barter systems mean you will still buy(with real$$) those things instead. Anything obtainable by players is sold. Right now, for UO i can buy lumber, ingots, leather, etc. as well as gold from places that sell stuff.

Pay to Win to me means in order to reach the top tiers of the game or get the best items, you have to pay the publisher of the game for it.

If I buy 100 million gold from a gold seller(or the publisher) and am the richest guy (for a period of time) in the whole game that doesn't mean I win at anything, my skills are still low, I don't know the content, I can't just go out and beat everyone because I bought a bunch of gold. I'm not Winning anything by doing that.

Now keep in mind.. Our Pledges are equal to this system proposed. I spent 750 to get all sorts of ingame goodies, a nicer house, first pick of house spot, a free vendor, weapons, seed, dye, crests, etc.. I paid a bunch of money for in game items and that is no different than what is being proposed.

 

I agree it is a very important design issue and I was simply offering an alternative idea, I just don't think the solution is "have Portalarium sell gold instead".

This is because it isn't a solution and doesn't really solve the problem or any of the symptoms caused by it (such as hyper inflation in the virtual economy and such). It just makes Portalarium the cause of the symptoms instead, rather than a group of gold farmers in China.

 

I am against in game currency being sold for RL money, whether it be by goldsellers in asia or RG in austin. Admittedly, it is difficult to prevent but the answer shouldn't be making it 'official'.

The negative effects to the economy, especially one as diverse as we hope SotA's to be, are obvious and I hope Portalarium doesn't choose to directly inflict them on the game just because it gives them a separate revenue stream.

 

oh here is how i see it gold selling is like piracy everyone does it in some way or form and those that say they dont are those that wont admit doing it. Its not going to stop anytime soon and there is no easy prevention method so to make it harder for them they could limit the amount that is tradable between accs. I dont know what system eve uses to track the botters gold sellers but they seem to be doing a fairly good job at it as i see alot of complaints about people getting caught and having there accs banned. Another way for us to assist the botters and gold sellers is to report them when we see this suspicious activity instead of just wingeing about it later.

All in all shifty people are smart, as soon as you close down one cell they will find another way to open another cell.

 

Problem with eve is that gold sellers can still get around it by using contracts which arent monitored....

Only reason people don't buy gold on Eve Online is because they have PLEX I took a poll about 2 years ago from Eve University ( a very large corporation in Eve) on how many people had bought PLEX ( RL money -> in game currency or virtual swag pieces for avatar) would you believe over 1,300 of a 2,000 player base actually bought PLEX.

 

Basically, make stuff not matter all that much and no one will care. Achievements are there for thing's your character has actually done. A top guild is welcome to hold the top castle as long as they can.

People bought gold in L2 because a +5 sword was better than a +3 sword.

My understanding is the EvE is fairly successful for people who understand a like the economic aspects of games. So I would look closely at whatever's working for them.

 

I'm pretty sure they already stated in some of the early dev hangouts that they were planning on selling their own currency to undercut the gold farmers. Which makes perfect sense because it's really a force you can't fight.

 

Sure it's a force you can fight - through good overall game design. "Lets sell it ourselves because there is nothing we can do anyway" is just a cop out and does nothing to fix the effects it has on the virtual economy and therefore the whole online game.

Infact I would go so far as to say that it actually makes such issues worse and results in greater levels of inflation and a need for the development of ever sillier or more annoying "gold sinks." Afterall - a gold farmer has to actually farm the gold which costs time and at least slows the process a little. If portalarium sells the gold themselves, it is a instant influx into the economy. It also effectively "legitimizes" gold buying making more people less apprehensive about doing so.

 

@Ashlynn [Pax]

Do you realize WoW has a whole department to fight gold sales? It's a 16 member team of customer support reps... that is probably bigger then the whole SotA team.... Would you rather them spend loads of money to stop gold sellers or they could instead just sell it themselves... make more money AND spend all their time making an awesome game!

Listen video games should be low maintenance for gaming companies, they should have a much greater amount of time to focus on new amazing content and balance rather then trying to chase gold farmers down, also gold farmers in game especially when they are banned and targeted begin resorting to hacking and illegal practices.