Richard Garriott interview on WarCry

My Liege,
Just to clarify, does this mean that we will not be subject to these transactions costs (i.e., only post-launch backers will be subject to them)? We all appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to respond to our comments

Lord Nightshadow

 

I am not sure what you are all referencing...
But let me explain, what I think the issue is:
Internally, we often discuss the relative value of things in real dollar terms, just as a relative perceived value of the transaction.
We have discussed the "tax" rate on property ownership FOR NON BACKERS.
Richard

 

Thanks LB, that's reassuring to hear.

Anyone worried about getting nickeled and dimed after release can rest easy with that one line.

 

IF you buy a lot as a backer, there will be NO on going cost for that lot!
Plus you can sell that "no tax" lot, for what could be a large sum of money, if the game does well!
R

 

Thank you for clarifying that! The problem with interviews is that they are often edited and we don't get all of the details, which can lead to a great deal of confusion...

 

I like the part about our items taking on a history like the "orc slayer" tag from killing lots of orcs. I remember him talking about that durring interviews in kickstarter, but I never thought that it would be recycled in the game by being found in a dugeon and being able to go find the person who made the weapon etc.

 

Mr. Garriot, from the article:

RG: "We're going to try and avoid the issue of selling power, but we do want to say that if you want to be a player in the world, you need to be supporting us...We're going to have some caps on things such as inventory, but if you don't want that, you can just pay us $5-10 per month and just forget about it."

People are asking about having to pay for inventory space with cash. I think a lot of people are ok with IN-GAME money to maintain stuff, its the RL cash only option that have people's hair up.

If there was clarification as to that: Is everything, maintainable IN-GAME, able to be paid for with IN-GAME money? If so, a lot of the confusion will go away.

The ancillary problem are things like extra space for money (inventory) but, meh, not a major issue to me.

I'd also politely suggest you guys control the message better before throwing it into the pack of hungry animals.

 

Thank you for clarifyng some of the questions in this hot topic, RichardGarriott!

A couple quick questions:
- Can you elaborate further on the cover system? That was a great feature in Tabula Rasa. How does that work with the new "card" combat system?
- Monthly fees make sense for extra storage space in your home/basement and bank. But they don't for your backpack inventory slots as those have typically been unlocked via one-time fees in other games. Can you clarify the "inventory" you're referring to regarding monthly fees?
- Can the monthly fee for extra "inventory" be also paid for with in-game currency?

 

If I may your grace...

Can we still upgrade our property deed and keep the tax free status?

 

I think a large part of the confusion is the quote sounds like you are offering real world money payments to let people ignore carry weight limits and backpack item limits, when I think you might be referring to things like bank capacity and house storage.

 

Yes, to Joviex's point, here's two questions regarding the Warcry interview that would benefit greatly from some direct clarification:

1) Can you expand the referred to "inventory cap" using only in-game currency (presumably gold) ?

2) Does this "inventory" refer to your personal bags, your housing storage, or your bank? (or any/some/all of them)

I won't speak for others, but getting those answered would be a calming influence on my mind.

 

I thnk you will need to increase your pledge level, as the tax-free perk is tied to the deed. And the deed type limits what size lot you can claim in-game. I haven't heard of any detail around upgrading your deed in-game.

 

I think there are a number of positives that can be taken away from the interview that are getting ignored:

This statement alone clarifies many issues that have been discussed on the boards. This is not going to be Ultima 10, nor is it going to be UO 2. It's going to be a hybrid of everything LB has worked on to date.

I think this is going to be a pretty cool feature. Legendary weapons getting recycled when someone no longer wants it, leaving it for another unsuspecting adventurer to find.

This is great. It will allow people to setup their shops and still sell items to people who do not want to interact directly with other players. Additionally, it will allow these same said, SPO players to get needed resources from online vendors without the need to craft everything thing themselves. Win win.

I think this part of the NPC interaction is going to be quite interesting. It's going to really bring the NPC's to life, IMO.

$40 is below retail for new games. This is great! Try to find any new AAA, MMO-Style game for under $60 without P2W/P2P. It won't happen.

 

An optional inventory upgrade for a monthly fee is not a gamebreaker. I think it's good that we actually have the option to get more space. I don't want to build up too high of a monthly fee thats for sure, but there should be some kind of support for the game. That's a good optional fee if there is such a thing.

 

The problem is:

Is it really an optional inventory upgrade?

Or is it: You MUST pay this RL monthly fee, to have even a slightly reasonable chance at having enough inventory space to spend more than 10 minutes exploring the world, gathering, fighting, etc.

Setting aside all the past statements regarding how the game was to be funded, I've seen this "inventory upgrade" trick before. It was used in GW2, and it was a one time fee to expand all bank storage on all characters, permanently. It worked very well, due to the following: Every player even remotely serious about reaching max level and playing the game long term purchased this one time feature. It essentially raised the cost of the game by $10. Marketing & Sales saw it as a win.

Having seen it before, however, I am now doubly cautious about weasel-words, double-speak, and political-talk. I'd rather the straight truth, even if it means the subscription is now effectively $5/month to maintain an adequate inventory.

 

Or is it an inventory upgrade at all? We know you have 4 slots you can place things in, including heavy bits of furniture and/or more bigger better even magical backpacks... I'm pretty sure the quote is referring to house storage based on how fixated RG is on it in response to this issue, but from the fact you can in fact craft the actual backpacks needed to expand your inventory as part of the plan that's been described to us, it sound very much to me like you will not have to pay real world cash to get the biggest possible character travel inventory.

 

Well you have a point. I've been upset enough over things I haven't yet seen in action I'm not going to bother myself worrying about that stuff anymore. I'm going to do my best to hope the best and expect the best.

I'm not giving up until there's reason to do so. Yet it does have the appearance that there will be more fees than any of us expected.

 

I have no issues with being able to put real money into your house. Houses are for all intents and purposes cosmetic.

Inventory, however, is not.

If I meet another traveller on the road, and he has an advantage over me because he happens to be paying an extra $5-$10 a month, then we have a serious problem.

And make no mistake, extra inventory slots is an advantage.

Now, if I am able to use in-game gold to expand my inventory if I so choose, then that advantage is negated and it becomes personal choice. Which is fine.

 

Those are all interesting points--I'm curious about that too. I suspect there will be a gameplay guide that sorts all of this information out in the future. in the mean time maybe we'll get another answer here in this thread to your question.

 

Star Wars The Old Republic had character-level inventory upgrades. Seemed kind of arbitrary since I'm not a physically different person between levels 1 and 40. There was no explaination of how it fit in story or lore.

SWTOR Inventory Module

BUT it was simply spend in-game money to add a row of ten slots. The price and character level required scaled as you went up the rows, and it seemed to match the earning potential at those levels too. If this is what RG is talking about (and I still don't know if he's talking character inventory or using it in a more general sense of housing and basements) then that would be fine. I'd squirm over the real-money option, but it's just that, an option.

If you read RG's Ultimate RPG missive, you'll see some references to casual games. I think he is trying to merge some of those ideas into the MMO space. One of those ideas is that time=money. If you won't want to wait two hours for your building to finish or for your scout to return with more information, then spend some in game currency. Don't have in-game currency? Buy some with real cash. Don't have the time to play to earn that gold to increase your inventory? Convert some cash.