Raffles - really? What a joke!

do not try and twist my words I did not say destroying anything I am just stating a fact that those with a lot of gold are buying a lot of tickets and winning the majority of the lots some are using them with good noble intentions others are using them for personal gain and profit.

and with that profit they have more gold to buy more tickets on the next raffle.

Simple math and equates to "rich get richer"

which is counter to what the raffle was intended to do in the beginning.

BT last reply here this thread has no further purpose or intrigue to me.

peace

 

* Thought i made it pretty clear i was generalizing the general line of thinking, that goes with the basis of your argument.*
Again... your simple math has no basis.
Where are these people who are winning deeds, selling them, then using them in more raffles? I watch the forums and the marketplace. The major winners were guild leaders who made it abundently clear they were doing it for guildmates, and im yet to see any one who would be making any REAL profit from doing so? 2 Rich people going all in, in the raffle, hurts them both.. With the freebees in place.. was it still that profitable do you think?

I see tons of examples of people proving it benifited the average / casual player. Yet no real basis on the rich benifiting from it as much as you guys claim.

The taxes factor.. and the Cap from it still being sold in store.. counters your *its simple math*.

General question to anyone who can elaborate on maybe what he was aiming for, or that line of dispute, as id love to see some real examples, < - General curiosity, not a challenge. There is a lot of factors and id love to hear some actual arguments to support that claim.

 

There are other games which sell "real" weapons, equipment and more on their addon store - this would be far worse for the state of SOTA gameplay. Just to be clear the elven bow , founders bow and Vanduul polearn are just about as good as their ingame equivalents. It's also easy to craft better ones.

Housing , decorations and costumes are the least disruptive stuff that the store can sell. And i think that we have to be honest with ourselves that SOTA isn't going to sell millions of game copies - a few hundred thousand would probably be a better figure. Certain funding mechanics just won't work as well consequently.

I also understand buyer's regrets and respect the sentiment. But many kickstarter game projects never even deliver 50% of what they promised and a few have never delivered anything at all. I'm thankful that 75-80% of the monthly game deliverables are met and the game keeps moving forward. I also hope that concerns and complaints continue to be discussed in the open. Stamping these discussions down never leads to a good end - and I speak from previous experience with other crowd funded projects.

 

I was just thinking about this thread in general. When I played Skyrim, or CIV or other games, I purchased DLC where it looked good. Played for a while and moved on to the next great game. Some games (like CS:Source and TF2) I've played for YEARS! The communities were what kept me interested as well as the game play.

SOTA however is a completely different animal. It's an unfinished game I'm investing time and money into. Starting with a pledge of a couple hundred, I increased it over the years as I became more convinced in the possible. If it fails (and I don't think it will), then I've learned something and moved on.

Now let's say this turns into another one of my favorite RG games (for me it all started with Ultima 4). So far it's looking very promising to me. Then I've contributed where I could to help move it forward. I've never done this before. For better or worse, this is an experience I just couldn't pass up.

And if it does take off. Then I'm at the beginning of a wild and crazy ride. If there is a better way to do this, like anything else in this community, please share the alternatives and we'll pick it apart or support it

 

Because of the endless whining about this, I think they should just offer unlimited taxable deeds on housing merchants and we can go back to the oh so fun days of IDOC camping.

 

I actually have a guild mate that I provided with access to a house because he didn't have one.
He just wrote me yesterday that he needs a lot in my pot now because he won a deed.
So I guess it's working.

 

I love the game overall BUT I think the raffle thing is kind of silly. They want gold sinks? But then make the oracle give 500 a day? Just seems weird to me...

 

Eh...

You realize that in the first raffle just "one", yes ONE person invested about 3 mil Gold and won, what? 70 or so deeds worth tons of $$$.

You realize if it was a set price in game gold, with 3 mil Gold you wouldn't be able to buy 70+ deeds.

90$ equals close to about 200k.

 

Yes. Well. What's your solution ?

 

Sell property deeds for direct IGG but cap how many you can buy per account per month

 

Josh, I sort of agree with you. I think it was a measure to put in a short term economic slow down in game, that has backfired.
Economies are far more complex and influenced more weirdly, and expansively, than a single game mechanic change.

Just a thought for future raffles, and I haven't thought it through in depth, so if you flame me, I won't combust

• Do away with "place anywhere" and have the raffle deeds region specific, such as "Perennial Coast", "Regalis", "Verdantis", etc. This could create a trading market.
  
• Keep POT deeds the same.
• Probably too late for Episode One, and may be too hard to code, but worth considering for the next continent land rush.
• And a way out there idea for Episode Two - index lot taxation of NPC and PRT towns to the regions' monthly population. ie : popular regions pay more tax, sparse regions are cheaper.
• Tax Free lot owners are not disadvantaged.

Because I'm off on a tangent, there could be valid new threads of discussion. Sorry Josh, but thanks for your post !

 

Is this a raffle discussion or a founding concept discussion ?

 

Let me clarify, cap the amount of IGG deeds released in the same way the raffle deeds are released by month. Each account can buy 3 of these deeds per month then are no longer eligible to purchase

No change to the deed stacking that people engage in via player trades or the add-on store and pledges

 

Nah, honest question. I am no fan of the raffle concept either but so far nobody came up with something more useful.
But I like your idea.

 

Care to explain more? Unlimited amount of deeds like forever at npc vendors?

(Edit: I assume Rowlot deed would cost at npc vendor something like 170 000g ( 1$=2000g and rowlot at add-on store costs 85$)

Anyway, final result: big guilds gets loads of deeds anyway with multiple accounts and huge amount of IGG and casual players struggles and doesn't have even a chance...

Next?

 

Makes a lot of sense to me. This way lots in outlying areas will cost a fraction of equivalent lots in the middle of cities. And living costs in Central Brittany should really be substantially higher than in Owl's head.

 

No. Take the current limited quantity of deeds being raffled off every month. Instead of raffling them off, place them for sale with some arbitrary limit on sales per account and let people buy what they want with IGG earned in game.

I believe it would be more difficult for guilds to access as many of the deeds as they do now and spread the deeds with more equity around the wider community including players who are not absorbed into groups via these forums.

Sure, people will still try to game the system as they do now, but now it requires more accounts, not just more gold and there would be attrition against the desire to snap up deeds as the bar to overcome increases.

As for your edit, a solution doesn't need to be perfect to be better then what we have. Large guilds already have a massive advantage as the status quo and limiting participation rate by account would reduce that overall substantially.

Not eradicate because of course people have multiple accounts and guilds have multiple members but a reasonable character can earn enough gold for a deed in about 30 minutes. I doubt anyone would buy or organised enough accounts to overcome that type of production of tickets.

I'd be very curious to see participation rates in the next raffle as I would expect you get a diminishing pool of participants who drop thousands of gold into the raffle and get nothing in return.

Also with the deeds being released monthly you can save for a lot and try to get a deed at reset where all that matters is ping which is still better then a random number generator.

 

Join one of them.
They are made from casual players ;-)

 

Exactly and

 

My bad.