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

Seeing as Zynga's stock has crashed and they are canning games left and right and may be on the verge of bankruptcy, I don't think their business model actually is working for them.

ETA: Oops, I misread that, you're talking about Zanga. I'll leave the original message up since I enjoy talking about Zynga's miserable failures, but sorry for the confusion. I would note that Zanga Poker has fewer than 4000 likes on FB, which is pretty much nothing. It's hard to say how successful they actually are.

 

Didn't read everything, but I do have something to say...

Anything used as a currency in a game (be it gold, isk, globs of dirt, clams, logs, or barter) will generate "farmers" who will work the medium to generate whatever it is that be the currency, ESPECIALLY if that game is popular. That is a reality that cannot be forgotten in any discussion. I have witnessed first hand the exodus of gold farmers from UO's Napa Valley, but you will trip over them on Atlantic. If the demand is there, it will be provided for by that portion of the community.

Yeah, I lumped the farmers into the community. After all, their actions and activity does indeed drive how a community develops, acts and reacts to certain things. Think about it - if not for those farmers, would there be shard-locked items from events? Without farmers, would UO's economy have tanked on certain shards? Is interesting when you draw similarities between a virtual economy and what is happening in the world's economy... interesting and scary.

Now, will SotA be a "pay-to-play" or "free-to-play" with "pay-to-advance-faster-if-you-have-the-cash" is the question. The gaming model will most likely be the second (and already kinda is considering the thanks early contributors are getting), with mid-range perks and rewards for bringing your friends along (think Farmville - the more friends you got, the more perks you got) while the biggest perks are given to those who bust out the credit cards. Will a player be able to advance/thrive without dragging their friends in and/or using a credit card to buy in? Yes... but it will take longer than others who do.

A game in point very much like this, GameInsight's "The Tribez".
1. I do not have to be online to play, but it will hook up periodically for updates
2. I don't need to buy the gold or crystals as both can be earned/awarded at varying rates
3. There is a "Friend" feature (altho it say's "Soon you'll be able to play with friends" - I'm assuming its not fully developed yet) Interesting, eh? Play solo or with friends... nice.
4. I've played this game for over a year... and am still hooked to it altho I only have 4 of the 8 islands developed.
5. A friend who's also played for over a year, but is bored senseless as he kept using his CC to advance & develop all of his islands. Poor guy - now he's returned to Farmville.
6. Although it is not a persistant/MMO type of game, the more I read about SotA's plans, the more I think about Tribez.

Jus' sayin'.

 

Thank you FireLotus for your ample response to this discussion. I do believe Portalarium has the best interests in mind, however let's take one example into context.

Buy Gems with real cash:
Get clothes that no one else can get unless they pay with gems.

Doesn't any form of that deplete the usefulness of player ran vendors?
Also, paying real money for anything besides game functionality is craziness lol.

I should want to have to go trekking through a dungeon or hunting down a specific monster to find my loot, and should be completely engaging. I don't want to be playing for a year, and then someone who is a new player has better stuff than me because they spent real money to get gems. Even if it is not pay-to-win, it still sounds like it is going to be pay-to-look better/ pay-to-make everyone jealous and be dependent upon the gem-house to find all of your items.

 

not to mention how will this work if PVP ends up being full loot?

I mean would it really be ethical to have something you pay money for stolen?
Have the same issue with the founder stuff BTW but this just widens it

 

I believe Portalarium should sell currency. I think it is the best way. Its this or buy from gold farmers.

Some of you guys are just crazy, who in their right mind will use an online poker game as an example?

And whats with the ethical issue around full loot pvp and real money currency? Come on get real! You suck in pvp, you cant defend your property, thats it. There is no ethic in a real adventure. Survival of the fittest.

You want a sanitized adventure, maybe sim is a more suitable game.

 

Brief rebuttal to Kei.

Regarding Currency: No, I don't think they should but it seems they will.

But to summarize: There are other ways to approach the problem. Ie: not having gold as the chief resource, not having gold faucets, creating other means of obtaining material wealth, letting the players decide how they trade goods via a barter economy, avoiding situations where there is a specific spot to farm X thing. etc etc.

Rather than doing as all have done in the past, try something new.

Regarding if they sell currency and other players can take it: If they do, they can't just sell 50k gold whatevers to someone and allow another player to PK and loot them of it 5 minutes later. That will lead to a) people preying on those who purchase the currency, and b) very VERY high levels of bitterness (and consequently a very bad reputation for the game) from those who buy it. In short - it would be a moronic approach.

Regarding random silly comment over survival of the fittest: Humanity hasn't been a survival of the fittest culture since we created fire.

The old world was more lawful than some of you would like. It could also be brutal in letting you know it. Read.

 

Ashlynn you are dead wrong. We are a survival of the fittest culture and still is today. Even in an office environment. If someone suck, he is gonna lose his job and be replaced with someone better, its that simple.

And when you want to rebut anything, perhaps you should answer within context.

1) There is no full loot in this game so a) no one will prey on anyone who purchased currency b) no bitterness because there is no full loot. In short there is nothing moronic.

Even if they allow full loot for those who flagged pvp or in pvp guild, that risk of losing something is already an accepted choice of that player.

Lastly, other form of trading without gold being the chief resource is simply a pain. How do you intent to buy something from a player vendor if there is no common currency?

 

@D-Rock "Thank you FireLotus for your ample response to this discussion. I do believe Portalarium has the best interests in mind, however let?s take one example into context."


You started off great, you thanked FireLotus for her valuable input and then agreed with her that Portalarium has the best interests in mind. THEN... you should have taken her advice, long deep breath, but instead you just kinda, didn't.


this is from FireLotus:

"You guys have managed to get yourselves all up in a lather about something that isn?t even an issue. Breathe. Nice and slow. Long? deep? breath.

Our stance on this topic has not changed. Shroud of the Avatar will not be a ?pay-to-win? game. Period."

If you would like a preview of what we are shooting for in terms of an economic model, check you can check out GW2. Conceptually, it is very close to what we would like to do."


and then she said,


"@Gunga Din ~ We are definitely aware of situations like the one you describe, which is why there are a complex series of decisions still to be made, and also why it is not something we are ready to define publically. We want to be sure we do right by our backers ~and~ create a solid game economy that allows us to develop great content while giving our players a great game play experience. Balancing that many variables is no easy task, but one we are ready and willing to take on successfully."


They agree with us! So, really, what sill needs to be discussed? How about ya'll back off until Dev forums and A/B testing opens up when there is something to actually be concerned about? Honestly this makes the community look pretty bad as a collective whole when we choose to say "thanks but no thanks and here is my opinion anyway" every time a Dev says something. Pick up your game.

 

Ok I read through all that and I have come to the conclusion that... 1) PvP should be full loot. The danger and actual reality of that vulnerability is what made Ultima Online exciting for me. 2) The amount of gold needs to be regulated. Having a store that sells gold would not only be a huge mistake, it would be a deathblow to the game. Kill the economy and you will kill the game.

 

Might as well close this thread Firelotus!

This thread is no longer constructive you gave us an economic model in a current game that SotA will look similar to.

That was the purpose of this thread (as the OP I know this )

But we are at the point that people are getting very worked up and it is not a constructive environment.

For the good of the community...
Please close this thread.

Monkus.

 

Lord British is running a monarcy, not a freaking company store! Coal miners know all about this (and there were plenty of company stores available in UO).

No offense but you can enjoy extortion here: https://register.perfectworld.com/nw_splash

and honestly, Love it, and really am enjoying it.


But, Ultima is going to have the fan following, and skilled gamers from the start. I don't want to pay 10 bucks to make my next suit of leather armor (I already got enough pieces through kickstart ). I don't want it turning into a scruffy extort er of RL currency. Folks from all branches of RL economies play UO, that is what made it great, AND IT SHOWED IN PLAY STYLE, RPG, and everything else that was done. You are taking them out of the game when doing stuff like this. It's not right.


I'll never mind if you do 10 bucks for a special mount, or even for a land plot. but honestly, don't make it a constant expense, please.

*holds back on wanting to flame*

 

and PS, not really wanting to flame off on the subject. Just please put Deep deep thought behind it before integrating.

Simply put keeping up with the Jones kills MMOs, it doesn't enhance it.

Community and socializing to get the much needed items exemplifies the MMO.

 

Thank you all for bringing up such excellent points, and contributing to the common good in constructive ways. Moving forward, what kind of currency is there going to be, I wonder?

 

I've never played GW2 nor know much about it. I've done a bit of research on this online and what I see I've summarized below....would love some points of clarification though...

We kill/loot/do 'stuff' to get gold. Gold is still the primary in-game currency by which the bulk of in-game transactions occur.

There's some sort of Gem Store that exists that sells items. Gems are sold for RL dollars. Can in-game gold be used to buy these gems??

These items appear to be fairly inconsequential in terms of actual game-play (killing/looting/doing). A lot of the items appear to be vanity items like useless Suits of Armor and fuzzy hats.
There's another set of items that are consumable but don't offer a competitive advantage to killing or doing anything per se, but maybe in some senses are emminently useful. Summoning a vendor or getting access to a bank etc.
There's a few items that appear to be basically options to get some crafting mats, free repairs, and other nominal niceties
A set of items that appear to be stat boosters and buffs. (do any GW users feel this hurts their ability to sell these kinds of things in-game?)
And finally a few items that boost bank and character slot space. Can this be done via gold in game?

Overall, this seems like a fairly balanced approach, that both offers some decent things for a price, but those things to me don't signal a Pay to Win scenario like we can see with Diablo3 e.g. I'm sure there will be some changes to the model that GW uses vs. what we'll see in Sota but to me this seems like a nicely balanced approach.

That being said, does absolutely nothing to curb or prohibit gold farming/selling. Personally i'm ok with that as there will never be a way to avoid that issue.

 

This thread is way to long to read everything, I stopped at page 5 and was falling asleep. I don't see a need for any outside game currency. I wouldn't mind paying a small subscription fee if it was about Portalarium needing money to keep the online game running, but I don't want to have to pay to win. I just want to have fun playing and I really don't care if you think you are better than me in game, or if you could kick my but because you had better equipment. I say again the only money you should need is from crafting "better equipment you could by with USD", or through adventuring and NPC venders should only sell basic equipment.
Can't we keep our posts shorter?

 

Getting to max level is easy.
The best gear in the game is easily optioned through crafting.
Gold can be exchanged for gems and gems for gold. So technically anything can be farmed.
People just work for gear skins and achievements.
If somehow spent $1000 USD on the game, all you'd save was a couple weeks grinding.

 

Crafting has always been one of my primary interests and I look forward to once again playing that role in SoTA. Since UO most of the games that I have played crafting was almost an after thought in the game development and poorly implemented both economically and in functionality. I believe that with great effort should come great rewards and I am tired of the limitations being put on crafting in most current games. I feel that truly rare and powerful weps and armor should be acquirable with crafting but at considerable cost in time and skill. I would love to see a game that could somehow overcome the massive timesink many place on gathering rare drop materials and transform that time and effort into the actual crafting end of things. I am a crafter, I do not want to spend 9/10ths of my time killing the same monsters or running the same dungeons over and over for the off chance that the materials that I need will drop. Hunting creatures are for the adventurer types, not the crafters. My time and dedication should be spent on crafting or gathering resources in a more typical fashion (mining, ect.). Anyway.. /end ramble

Now you are probably wondering what this has to do with the subject at hand. My concern is that any attempts to stifle gold farmers will affect any true attempt at an immersive crafting system. Any system that has great rewards or require great time or effort will naturally have a higher demand or value and be of prime interest to money farmers. Gold/money farmers are going to exist regardless of any implementation of counter measures, I think that is a given. I personally would rather see an immersive crafting system that allows super dedicated craftsmen to flourish in a free system over dumbed down systems intended to hamper farmers. I hope they do not attempt to implement things such as account bound on craft items or sub par craftable items to combat cash transactions. My concerns are not for cash but instead making a game where crafters are truly viable again.

 

I loved the Ultima series over decades and support SotA where i can, i can also say that i pledged a higher amount to support this game, but if they put an additional Portalarium currency (which i can buy for real money) into the game, i will be finished with the game very soon. I am looking for a Ultima-like game with the desire digging deep into the game as decades done in the former Ultima games. I hate everything around Goldselling and there are a lot of other options and methods to prevent the goldfarmers or to make their life harder. From my pov ingame item shops or payed ingame-currency ruined in generally the games. We currently have a "Dark Generation of Videogames" with the pestilence of F2P and microtransactions. GW2 and Neverwinter and other famous F2P games like Swtor and Lotro sold their gaming-"soul" only for the main target to generate more revenue. F2P and eveything similar eliminates the gaming experience of a game. They spammed my email inbox with offers from the ingameshop, all is around making money and not the game is the focus. And finally their marketing managers trying to convince everyone and everywhere that F2P is so great..playing free a (limited) game. Especially their "lie" and "missuse" of the word "free"! How poor is that? Whats with game demos or playing for a free certain amount of time? Sorry....but i have nothing positive to write about F2P, Ingameshops, Currency Trade vs. Real Money.

 

I've never see low cost of labor hurt crafting. What it generally hurts is gathering. Someone can spend hours with with a bot, or with marcos / macro keyboards, or just bored and making $.50 / hour in a sweat shop, being more efficient than you're willing to spend your time doing. The flood on mats on the market is generally a boon to crafters because it makes crafting the most efficient way to obtain gear.

I can see RMT affecting crafting with "craft xp" boosters or speed ups for crafting. But this skirts very close to the micro transactions we'd all like to avoid, so I suspect they're quite wary about this. I'm not opposed to the idea of allowing someone to hire an apprentice using either gold or RMT.

 

Aye, the League of Legends model is a great one. Why? If you want to get new champions, you can either flat out buy them with cash or you can keep playing matches and earn enough IP (in-game currency) to buy them. Runes though can only be purchased with IP so no one can say it is "pay to win". Also, buying a skin does nothing for a champion but change their appearance (and sometimes VO) so it's purely a cosmetic thing and again, NOT "pay to win".