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

ummm of course in game currency is going to be important, virtually every comment coming from the devs is that crafting and trading are going to be vital to the game, that everything you need your going to have to either make or buy

 

@ Gunga Din (1st Post)

Wow congratulations FireLotus! I pledged during Kickstarter but I did not follow much of the updates during that time.

@Gunga Din (2nd Post)

Your Question:
What exactly are the ?British Bars? for? (other than expansions)

My answer:
I am not sure, all they have stated they will be selling for USD are types of expansion content either skill trees, regions, or content additions. So for now I modeled this system just to show that not all of these payment type monetization models are bad.

@Onore

If there is no base currency for trading to take place the whole process of trade becomes very difficult , there is a reason the world moved on from barter systems it is a pain in the rear when the economy starts to grow and people want to trade but they actually have to try and find goods that both parties are equally interested in to be able to complete a trade... This sucks!

Currency is something that has to be used if you want a market/trade dependent supply chain. If we were a Utopian player base or if items did not have a huge amount of value in the game barter systems work fine. The most successful barter system in a game currently is Team Fortress 2 however this game is not built on trade or player trade interactions... Where most MMORPG's are based on these interactions.

@Gunga Din (3rd Post)

Bind on Pickup (BOP) items are great for helping economies function - but they are truly immersion breaking and since SotA wishes to be a crafting based MMO. You cannot have BoP crafting items that would be insane... With this in mind most decent items would be crafted and crafted items should not be BoP either... this kind of ruins the use of BoP items.

@Gunga Din (4th Post)

I totally agree I think most gold supply should come initially from selling items to NPC shops, next to no gold should drop unless it drops off humanoid PvE NPCs. If they make the gold supply stem from selling items to NPC shops that also have a corresponding tax rate based on the region they could really control the gold supply quite efficiently.

@Vagabond Sam

You are totally right Vagabond Sam I could not agree more, I just wanted this to become something that is on peoples minds during pre Alpha it should be something the player base gets to have a say in - and I believe markets are really important to a games longevity. The more opinions and posts in these threads the more awareness there will be for these features in Alpha and Beta testing.

 

@Sir Asguard

I can only speculate what your experiences are with an online economy, but my post is not about 'waiting to see *if* currency is important, but to see what role it plays before everyone starts jumping to conculsions on how the idea put forward by the OP would be resolved in an online game.

Final Fantasy XI currency (Years ago when I played it anyway) was directly tied to succuss and remaining competitive with the need for many consumables like Prism Powder, Sneak Powder and foods. You burned through that daily just to get regular stuff done. So in that example RMT would become a way to buy power and would put many people off.

Rift, at end game plat becomes supurfloius. You need to use BoE tokens to gain more power and the consumables you use are often crafted by your guild and kept in storage or can be obtained for a price that is covered by your raiding/dungeon running anyway. In rift currency is important for mounts, houses and cosmetic gear but not power. So in that sense RMT is not leading to the aquisition of power.

So given we don't know yet which path SOTA will follow in terms of how currency fits in to the game so we also cannot assume the consequences of something as complex as RMT in the economy.

Of course there are people who will be put off by RMT reguardless of how it actually impacts the game and I can understand that. However they could be honest and just say they don't like RMT based on principle, rather then trying to convince us it will break the game and ruin it for everyone.

For the record I hope for a robust economy like FFCI where currency can be traded and has value so I'd prefer a closed game economy not affected by RMT. If the game has RMT then I'll still play but to be honest when ever the devs talk about buying things with RMT they so far have only talked about account based stuff like unlocking new skill sets and expansions.

 

@Vagabond Sam

Great insights here especially to RIFT I really enjoyed that game I played prior to the first expansion so the game was completely different then - basically you just had to raid to get the best gear since the gear from raiding was even better then a lot of the PvP gear for the Warrior archetype.

I had a lot of fun I played on Asphodel and was in the leading Defiant PvE guild as a melee dps warrior which was quite a feat at the time. Great game at release and I was so in love with Riftblade for PvP with sword and board.

 

Sam I'm confused as to what your talking about. Do you mean will people just be making things for your house? yes there will be furniture makers but also your weapons will be player made and will degrade requiring players to repair them (or to pay even more to NPCs to do it). Then there are consumerables like food and potions which will be single use and require chefs to make them constantly. In fact Chris said in one chat that newbies should be able to fight almost anything a higher character could but would be using a ton more consumerables to do it. On weapons he said that they are going to cost more to repair them as time goes on but that they will be benefits to doing so so that you will get to a point where you have to decide whether its worth repairing for the additional benefits but having to pay massive amounts for it OR to retire that weapon and buy a new one and maybe display that one or save it for boss fights or whatever

Furniture on the other hand he said would be make once so your chairs wont break over time though then what is the long term prospects of being a carpenter when the number of houses is limited and furniture lasts for ever?

 

@ Sir Asguard

I am pretty sure Sam is just saying we have no clue what/ or how currency will relate to actual power in game - so everything is speculation at this point he gave examples of a game that actual end game power has nothing to do with the amount of basic currency you have. (RIFT)

Or maybe currency in this game, since it is crafting based, might be an extremely powerful resource...

We just do not know. So to judge how a system that is RMT (like the system I proposed in this thread) is clearly 100% conceptualization since we can only develop RMT to a certain point without having any information on how the economy interacts with players and itself.

So players that say RMT in this game would be terrible and pay 2 win.
And players that say we need RMT and Gold Sellers in every game.

Are BOTH ignorant. Because honestly we have no idea - that is why this thread is conceptual in nature and has random values in place of currency amounts because everything is speculation. This thread is merely trying to get to a proof of concept phase based on the idea that currency will be worth at least something in game. If currency is worth nothing in this game this thread can be closed.

Lol.

 

Forget real money for a min

Are you seriously suggesting that we have no idea whats going to happen with in game money and how important its going to be?

Read the rest of my post

Chris and LB have stated on multiple times that your weapons are going to need repairing as they are used, that repairing is going to cost more and more as time goes by and also that there will be reasons to want to repair that weapon rather than just replacing. Also stated that the best way to do this is to take it to a PC but in a pinch you will be able to take it to an NPC (though that will cost more and be less effective)

We can assume that the same will go for armor

We have also been told by Chris that food and potions (consumerables) will be vital especially to low level characters

We have also been told that virtually everything you want you will either have to make or buy but you wont be able to make everything yourself (if your a chef you wont be able to also be a world class blacksmith etc)

So how do we not know how important in game currency will be? Your saying all this will be done by trade? Of course not, its going to be paid with GOLD. In fact they said that specifically repairs will be paid with gold

 

@Sir Asguard

Almost nothing you stated has to be paid with gold you are doing something called extrapolation based on the knowledge you think you have about the game - you are speculating at best.

You cannot be sure how the system will work until and Alpha and Beta release are out... Even then anything can change.

You use the world assume, you have heard the saying about assuming right?

Repairs yes, however I bet many people will get into armor crafting just to fix their own armor we have no idea how big on an issue it will be. You really have no idea how it will be at release.

 

@Sir Asguard



"Chris and LB have stated on multiple times that your weapons are going to need repairing as they are used, that repairing is going to cost more and more as time goes by and also that there will be reasons to want to repair that weapon rather than just replacing. Also stated that the best way to do this is to take it to a PC but in a pinch you will be able to take it to an NPC (though that will cost more and be less effective)

We can assume that the same will go for armor

We have also been told by Chris that food and potions (consumerables) will be vital especially to low level characters

We have also been told that virtually everything you want you will either have to make or buy but you wont be able to make everything yourself (if your a chef you wont be able to also be a world class blacksmith etc)

So how do we not know how important in game currency will be? Your saying all this will be done by trade? Of course not, its going to be paid with GOLD. In fact they said that specifically repairs will be paid with gold"

It depends on how effectively one can gather gold. That is the difference. I read your post. I just am follwoing the reasoning that there are two ways currency gains value.

Supply and Demand.

The devs have told us about demand. They have not revealed the supply sources. So, my point is essentially that the 'power' that is associated with currency depends on how hard it is to aquire, as well as what can be aquired with it.

So, if players gather currency naturlaly in the game as they quest, kill mobs and sell drops then the supply of gold will be high, lowering the value. This is the type of economy we have in most MMO's.

However if the currency flow into the game is much more restriced in that only specific activites 'create' currency and you must suspend day to day adventuring to complete NPC vendor contracts, or specific quests with no other rewards tied into it, then currency will have more value and more power, thus possessing RMT of more controvosy. This model was in FFXI as you only got Gil from very limited quests that offered no other benefits so people were really tempted to buy Gil as it allowed them access to power.

And yeah, as pointed out by Monkus all those activities are possible if you play the game within a community of guild, with little to no payment.

And to answer your biggest question

I am seriously suggesting we don't know what is going to happen with the game. It's not made yet, things will change, things will be added, things will be dropped. I would bet British bars to british bucks that we will see members of this community leave, and other join in as the game develops over time.

Until it's coded (And even then, until alpha at the -earliest-) any mechanics are just concepts subject to interpretation on implementation. Who knows we may even find some of the concepts we personally love to not be 'fun' in the game and will have to see them scrapped to ensure SOTA is the best it can be.

So I'm pretty relaxed about the whole thing and just popping my 2 gil in on conversations I find to be interesting. Economy of a game interests me as in FFXI it was robust enough to do interesting things which I have not seen elsewhere.

 

Actually I think a pure barter system would be very interesting. Not sure if I have experienced that in any mmo outside of sporadic player to player trades which is pretty hard to find useful in many games now.

 

@InsaneMembrane

I would be a fan of a barter system... however, maybe I have never seen one pulled off properly but they usually end up establishing a type of currency at some point.

An example I can think of off the top of my head.

I was playing this Trading Card Game online may years ago, in this game there is obviously only a barter or trading system however you could destroy a large amount of cards lets say 50 commons or 20 uncommons or 5 rares to then be able to open up a booster pack.

At first everyone traded cards normally like it was designed but after about 2 years people started to get a large number of cards, and they only wanted specific cards and it became increasingly difficult to make a deal that got multiple players the cards they wanted.

So a rather industrious individual in our community began to run some calculation on what cards were the best rarity and most common on the trade market, he then created some cards that were basically just booster pack fodder... extremely cheap cards that could be broken down to get booster packs...

Over time this "currency" caught on in the community so then you saw trades like "1000 WoW's" for "1 SotA" since the WoW's are definitely more common then the SotA's this made it so you could actually accumulate all the cards over time.

 

Yes there is a game to every system. Whatever they end up using, would love to see it game proof, good luck devs

 

Umm talk about reaching

"Added 3/27: A special, commission-free Vendor!"
Whats the point if trade isnt important, seriously try reading ANY of the posts in the trade section of this site. If you are trying to say "oh it wont be gold, will just be barter" how are other people going to pay "commission" in barter? half a sword?????

"Property is rent free, forever"
What do you think was the point of putting that into reward unless everyone else WILL be paying rent, again are you suggesting rent will be half a sword?????


"Chris
March 22, 2013 ? 10:41 am
Vendors at houses yes. There will also be a bazaar for those without a house but it will take a % cut"
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=petition-against-the-auction-house-approach&paged=3



B "Many, many, many great points. Thanks everyone! This thread will serve as a treasure trove of great ideas and opinions. Keep em? coming.

First off, THERE WILL NOT BE A SINGULAR GLOBAL AUCTION HOUSE. This has never been in the plans. Like many of you pointed out, a global auction house really kills a lot of socialization in the game. For some games this makes sense but it does not for us.

We are BIG in favor of creating regional markets. There is however a need for some type of indexing system that summarizes what is available regionally to prevent you from having to scour every single vendor. Specifics of this are still being flushed out but the basic idea is that there will be a regional marketplace that lists all the available goods. If you buy from the marketplace you pay a market fee. If you buy the item from their vendor then there is no market fee. EQ2 implements a similar system.

We have discussed a separate commodities market that would allow players to buy/sell crafting commodities. Fees would not exist in this case since you bring the commodities to the market. This would also allow non-house owners to participate in the commodities market. I do like the idea of a classified ad system where players can advertise their goods in more of role-playing context."

LB "I too really like the idea of Salvage! Our current thinking of the framework is as follows:
Equipment can be crafted.
Crafting nominally can ?imbue? special attributes into a piece of gear (buffs and other individualization).
The most every item could be more unique, and uniquely suited to you and your other equipment.
Use of a piece of equipment implies you get more familiar with its use, its weight and that comfort breeds ?affinity?.
We think items should have a condition which encourages you to maintain (repair) it.
Older equipment becomes more costly to repair as it gets older and older.
Thus you can always decide, do I like this item enough to continue to maintain it?
When is the right time to retire it and hang it on the wall (except for some special occasions)?
When should I just recycle / salvage it.
I like the idea of salvage, as it likely has both good ?memories? as well as cool abilities you could get back!

Keep the great ideas coming!
? Richard ?Lord British? Garriott"

LB "Oh, I also like the idea that dropped loot, is usually far more ?basic?: than crafted items, which gives value to a crafter!"

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=player-made-vs-game-made-question-and-idea

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?forum=crafting

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=if-you-enjoy-exploring-and-crafting-please-read

B "There will be NPCs that will repair for gold if you cannot find a player blacksmith to repair. It is our goal for player blacksmith repair to be the most efficient form of repair."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=repairing-items

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=gathering-quality-shiftsfluctuation

B"We certainly want to make crafting food unique and different from other crafting skills. It will naturally have more of a crossover with alchemy making it even more important to differentiate these two skills.

I believe our crafting focus on having similar recipes but different material ingredients fits well into cooking. The pie example with crust and filling is spot on."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=crafting-food

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=merchant-contracts

B "@Ara: Crafters will be the major source of gear and consumables in the game. I expect gearing back up to basic level should be easy to do.

@LordSlack: Great point about needing some type of game feature to help streamline the re-gearing process."

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=re-gearing-should-be-easily

B "We definitely plan on durability/wear and tear being a big part of the crafting game. We have not yet resolved specifics of repairing but the goals is to make items eventually become unusable after enough wear and tear even with repair. We recognized the implications the design of the durability and repair mechanic will have on the life of a crafter.

As far as death, you will not lose your items. We have not finalized specifics of what happens when you die but I can assure you it will not be a situation where others can loot or steal gear. A durability penalty is highly probable however."
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=item-loss-decay

I believe this may have been changed as it seems to contradict what LB has said latter, it maybe prohibitively expensive but not unusable

Thats just some of the examples. Unless something specific is mentioned that there is a sudden huge change to a barter system its irrational to think that in game gold would play anything but a major part in the game

 

I am really excited for this game I know probably a lot of people hate me on here but I want this game to succeed just as much as anyone else on here I also have a lot of my money on the line.

I just like to challenge ideas and play around with them.

 

@Sir Asguard

No one on this thread has talked about global marketplaces.. in my system and in other threads I actually stated everything should be regional to allow for real "trading" to occur and other emergent behaviors.

And I never said gold will not be used actually my system depends on the fact that gold is worth something in game.

However, we do not know how important it will be you are still speculating and extrapolating information, and acting like you know exactly how the outcome will be... In reality you could be right or wrong just like everyone else.

I do commend you for copy pasting a wealth of information here though!

 

@Lord Asguard

The SOTA devs have been fantastic in sharing their ideas and vision with us but I think to quote each line as the final format will lead to dissappointment. If I had the inclination and time I am sure I could complie an impressive list of dev ideas in other games that change, evolve and are dropped from a development project.

Devs generally will remain fluid and may in the future recognise that there are issues with things they want to do and so change it or adapt it to solve an emergent problem.

And I have never said the game will not function as you are describing it, I have just looked at what formats are possible in a game like this.

I appreciate the dialogue and I don't -think- my posts are antagonistic, so I hope they aren't taken that way.

However, some of the emphatic language you are using like 'Are you serious' and 'talk about reaching' does come accross a little inflammatory.

I only say this because I have noticed some trends in the forums where the community is agitating one another over difference in opinion, and considering you raise some well thought out points and have a great background in what the dev team has talked about (Much better then mine) it would be a shame to lose the focus on your posts by getting into a semantic squabble.

Anyway, I hope you read this the way it is intended and it's not condescending or anything. It's hard to use text is such a way

 

Sir not Lord (YET, I hope that will change)

As for the rest yes, it was a little inflammatory (for which I apologize) but it was more an honest expression of disbelief.

Yes some things may change as the community suggests ideas and the devs work through issues but the general idea of the game actually must remain true to what is stated on the kickstarter page because that is a legal contract between us and those we are giving money to. As they have said to come here and haven't said on kickstarter that the things said here are "non core promises" (to use the stupid phrase coined by one of our former PMs) there would be a good argument to say in court that the things here are also legally binding.

Does that mean they if things aren't ready to go on the day that they could be sued? I would hope not but on the other hand if they suddenly made the rewards gained by housing irrelivent because everyone has houses or everyone can craft invalidating the vendor or they suddenly made the game pay to play instead of pay to own then they would be in breach of there legal contract on kickstarter because that isn't the game we have paid to support.

This goes right back to the initial video, right through every update and everything else

Bait and switch isn't allowed by the terms of kickstarter which makes the contract legally binding on the developers let alone the normal laws of land

 

I didn't write that to be antagonistic to the devs, i believe they will come through with what they promised without need for these provisions. i posted it to show to other people here that not everything is up for debate, somethings are now set in stone by there own words. Everything they have said isn't just spitballing until the game is released, we have already committed to the game and therefore the contract is already made. If it turned out to be a FPS not an RPG that would be a breach of contract, in a normal arangment that might be ok because they would get approval from the publisher to change it but a kickstarter project isn't like that

 

Those aren't the terms of kickstarter.

"Projects must be clear about their state of development, and cannot be presented as preorders of finished products. Projects must show details (photos, videos, sketches) of their progress so far, along with a prototype demonstrating the product's current functionality. <b>Projects must explain how the final design is likely to differ from the prototype</b>, and include a production plan (i.e., how you're going to make it) and an estimated timeline."

"Project Creators agree to make a good faith attempt to fulfill each reward by its Estimated Delivery Date."


Pre-alpha = prototype and they can change it. If they change something it will be for better game play.

 

@Sir Mishri

Ah thanks for clearing that up boss.

@Sir Asguard

I am going to quote you here in combination with Kickstarters rules if you do not mind:

You said:
"Does that mean they if things aren?t ready to go on the day that they could be sued..."

Kickstarter says:
"It's not uncommon for things to take longer than expected. Sometimes the execution of the project proves more difficult than the creator had anticipated. If a creator is making a good faith effort to complete their project and is transparent about it, backers should do their best to be patient and understanding while demanding continued accountability from the creator. "

You said:
"...then they would be in breach of there legal contract on kickstarter because that isn?t the game we have paid to support....Bait and switch isn?t allowed by the terms of kickstarter which makes the contract legally binding on the developers..."

Kickstarter says:
"Kickstarter does not guarantee projects or investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. On Kickstarter, backers (you!) ultimately decide the validity and worthiness of a project by whether they decide to fund it."

All of this information came from:
http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics#Acco

Also additional contingencies located here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0
(at the bottom labeled "Risks and Challenges"

The only thing that kind of backs up your side of the story is the Terms of Service people accept when creating a project ( https://ksr-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/creator-responsibility.png ).

However the only time you can request a refund is if the creator can not finish their product and distribute their reward tiers... This is not time based either if the company shows transparency and posts product updates on kickstarter.com ... As long as it is a video game for pc developed by portalrium you could not get any refund even if it was an FPS based on the accountability standards... however, if they made Teddy Bears instead of a pc game then you could get a refund.

@ Sir Asguard if you do not totally understand Kickstarter's accountability standards you probably should not Kickstart projects... You are not investing in a company you are actually pre-paying for a good or service that will be fulfilled in the future.

So STOP threatening and being dogmatic towards the developers in the game they are well within their rights.