Richard Garriott interview on WarCry

I'm going to have to unwatch this thread because it's only going to piss me off because people's logic just might be too sound. I'd rather just play the game and find out rather than argue a point over and over. I'm cutting my losses now as far as anxiety goes.

 

Hello Everyone,

We completely understand the confusion and consternation some of the quotes from this article have caused. We are still very early in development (just 7 months) and we are still refining the details around our monetization strategies for the launch. This means that sometimes we will make statements that are more about our thinking process and less about a final decision. We will also sometimes make simple mistakes because we are human. We are considering things like expansions to inventory as purchasable items but we have only ever discussed that as a one time fee, not a recurring fee. This would be a really poor customer experience because what would happen if you stopped paying the recuring fee? Would we delete items from the extra inventory? Would we hold the items in extra inventory hostage until you paid us? Those use cases are why we would never make inventory upgrades linked to recurring fees. Richard simply mispoke in this case about the recurring fee.

Finally it is worth noting that until you see something in the FAQ you should NOT consider it final and merely a glimpse into the development process and thinking.

-Starr

 

Starr: Thank you for clarifying that! I'm sure you just put a lot of us at ease

 

Again I hope we are not talking about inventory on the Avatar.
House or bank inventory is fine with me.

The size of the item and strength should be the deciding factor as to how much we can carry.

 

Thanks Starr, I'm glad you cleared that up. Was worrying a few of the fans and potentially putting off new backers.

 

Whether the fee is recurring or not, a fee to increase inventory is still pay to win, unless the same result is achieveable through in-game currency.

 

You guys need to reign Richard in then, unless the quotes were taken WAY out of context, his "off the cuff" and "not ready for prime time" comments can do MAJOR harm to the spirit of this project.

We absolutely respect and stand behind what you are doing (lord knows we've thrown lots of money your way!) so please take very good care of OUR baby (yes, it is part OURs, too !!!!

You don't know just how much we want this series to succeed...

 

I am curious how that applies to housing.

What is the current mechanism being thought about for people who fail to pay rent/deed/taxes/leins whatever you are calling it, for houses filled to the brim with items?

Are banks then going to be overflowed with stuff? Does that mean banks will hyperinflate to keep everything that person had in their house?

 

Foreclosures, baby!

I forsee public auctions, to sell off the posessions of dead-beat tenants.

 

Your lot deed will return to your inventory/bank and all your stuff will be magically packed into the deed.

 

I think there's some confusion of inventory vs. bank slots. Charging for bank slots puts pressure on people to look at houses. Charging for inventory is nickle and diming people who've possibly donated hundreds of dollars already.

I've never been opposed to the concept of recurring fees in SotA but:
1) It's a huge piege of why I never tried UO
2) There are a lot of really good games out there without this. So the sandbox elements / PvP would have to be simply amazing to justify it.

Ultimatly I just want the largest number of people playing the game.

 

And if those are full?

Just trying to get a handle on what the logic is being applied. One hand you have no more room for stuff it goes into escrow.

Th other gets packed into a single slot item, but then goes into your inventory, but I have no room? so?

 

What if they added inventory upgrades as part of tier rewards? Founder gets one upgrade, Royal Artisan gets two, Explorer gets three, Patron gets four, or something along these lines.

 

Thank you, Starr, for clarifying this and reiterating this point.

 

What is to say they get full? The deed is essentially a container, and what is in it are just rows in a database. You can code special cases where things are auto-returned to you without throwing it all out of whack. Perhaps your bank can hold as much as the system wants it to, however you cannot put anything into it until you deal with the extra items and return it back to below max capacity.

 

Starr: I guess the problem lies in the fact that any quotes attributed to either you, Richard, or Dallas is taken as gospel by those on the forum. Seir does bring up a good point in that some judgement must be exercised when granting interviews - i.e., make clear to the interviewer that these are some of the ideas you are considering, nothing has been set in stone, etc. Otherwise, you might end up with a lot of confused and angry backers, as evidenced by some of the responses to this particular interview...

 

If only we had some documents that stated some of the design principles and ideas and didn't have to go berserk whenever we hear about something for the first time in an interview.....

 

They will likely special-case this and always ensure that your house/basement and all of its attached items can fit in your backpack or bank as it will be a zero-weight, zero-space item.

 

At first I was good with keeping inventory in the house deed but I can see a problem with it.
Lets say we get some missions to ship or smuggle goods accross the land.
Instead of carrying them you put everything in your house, turn it into a deed and then travel across the map to where you have another lot or a friends lot to place the house and then go reclaim your prize.

 

The easy solution to that would be to make the 'smuggling quest item' locked into the players inventory until the quest has been either failed or completed.