Sorry not again but I have to re stretch goal remedy

Thank you smack for putting the video on the Forums for us Basically what I saw in watching it was very good and flawless interview. It by no means visualized the game to its fullest glory, but I'm sure time was limited.

Regarding the stretch goals:

I know this is a hard topic to hear for many. I do hope that the Development team will hear and communicate with the community to re-establish the stretch goals in a more empowering way.

So instead of battling over it which has gone on forever.

1) I think we need to make the proposal that empowers the community and the development team to get these things in game. To say that the interest is not there is in my mind not totally the whole picture, many don't trust them, some can't afford them, and others are not here to even see them.

2)Where's the exposure and where is system to drive them into being?

3)Previous ideas have been mentioned here and there but wouldn't it be great to have them all in one place.
Let's forge together.

4)The stretch goals will provide a better indication of what they are and how they will work in game.

Ok so I am so sorry community, and I do hate to do this, you know to rehash this subject and beat a dead horse, which of course I don't think it should be dead of course. I just think that this powerful and talented community can remedy a system that is broken. So please lets appeal to the our development team to help us to help them.

So don't come in here to argue please, please please. Post your remedies ok You're the best community and you are the best development team. Shroud of the Avatar will prevail to be the greatest game out there.

edited..........for #3
edited again.........for #4

 

We cannot beat a dead horse because we did not reach the mount stretch goal and could not enable mounts to participate in full loot PvP.

 

We need boats, horses, pack horses, and moveable structures as part of our game. I have the patience to wait for the more complex ones...but pack horses are just an inventory system that follows you around right?

 

There have been a few proposals put forth by the community. I feel like the biggest problem is that players take on all the risk of spending a bunch of money on items that might not activate and become really worthwhile in Episode 1 without that being fully offset. I get that if these features are added in Episode 2, then additional features of items may activate down the road but the rarity appeal of some of these items may be overstated. If they really implement mounts in Episode 2, then they'll likely have tons of vanity mounts for sale in the Add On store that look much nicer than the basic horses (because mounts are big revenue stream in other games).

The devs also haven't been answering any of the questions I've seen put forth over the past six months such as, what size lot do you need for the Elf House, will the spyglass work in game, will the greenhouse affect farming in any way, etc.

My proposal was:

1. Allow stretch goal purchases to add to your total for higher tiers. Most of the time higher tiers just mean more digital rewards and they don't cost the devs anything, but it encourages people to open their wallets.
2. Allow people to melt the stretch goal items and spend the money on other items in the add-on store if the stretch goal isn't going to be met. So long as the devs keep the money, allowing people to move that money around should be allowed.

Really, full on success for any of these goals will likely depend on getting new backers in the community. The full burden to fund these is a bit much for the existing backers we have, especially since many of them are already financially tapped on their investment in this game.

 

Yes enderandrew and I think you have great ideas, plus they are things that would help. I just offer my voice to yours and to the community to revamp the broken stretch goal system once and for all.
You know I can sometimes come off a bit naggy, well or something like that It needs to be fixed. It is a sense of discontent for the community the way it is set up now.

 

Here is my idea.

1) Allow current backers to pick their top 3 stretch goals in order of preference.
2) Assign a portion of their pledge (i.e. 3%, 2% 1%) to those goals.

That way you get a realistic protrayal of community desires, AND the goals get a reasonable boost to their funding. I dont think it is too much to ask for an Adventurer pledge ($45) to divert $1.35 to their favorite stretch goal.

Closing the gap to the goal would encourage more people to directly fund it AND tying it to the pledge would entice people to pledge up. I mean a Knight Pledge ($800) would be contributing $24 to their top pick if using the 3%. That sounds pretty legit to me.

 

This is almost definitely a bad idea, but we could have a Kickstarter based on stretch goals, but in priority order as Solstar suggested. The only reason I mention Kickstarter is because it is a lot more trusted to deal with the capital than any of us, plus it would be all or nothing. A better idea might be for Port to do it here, but at the same time the Kickstarter might pull in more players.

 

Thank you Solstar for your thoughts. I don't personally think that all would agree with the part about letting part of the pledge amount go to the stretch goals. The stretch goals are represented as special features and items we would like to see in the game.
The point is that the development team has stated in the past that the stretch goals will take time away from the creation of the game, and would be able to be implemented when they were able if they were funded. If it were the other way around as enderandrew
mentions or some other version then our stretch goals could perhaps have a percentage go to our pledge, but I don't think anything should be taken away from the pledge amount to do this. This is for core systems, which of course many of us agree stretch goal
items should be of course. We aren't able to prove this to them the way the system is set up now, so we must appeal to them to change the system to work for the good for us and for the good of the game.

 

They are going to have a hard time even meeting the goals they set in the original kickstarter, hence why they put those goals so expensive. I believe that because they didn't have them in the first place and there was so much outcry that they made it an option to have them in...at a very expensive rate.

 

Hi rune, well hopefully if we could get them to fix the broken stretch goal system then a surprising thing would happen in that we would meet the goals, and we would all be happy, well hopefully most.

 

This is an excerpt of something I had recently written to Portalarium for points that seem to coincide with the idea of this thread. I was writing just about a couple of forum/pledge bugs and somehow started discussing stretch goals.


Regarding Stretch Goals: People may be purchasing those items in anticipation of them being "rare" but there is no motivation for this if the stretch goal will be live until funded... anyone can go and purchase it at any time from Portalarium --- so if anyone can pay $20 to the store for an admiral outfit, then the value of that outfit will be less than $20 relative to in-game currency.

I have several recommendations:
1. Have the Cost of purchasing stretch goal items increase over time. This may push people to purchase earlier and create the same sense or urgency as removing items from the add-on store. This has the benefit of further rewarding people who back the stretch goals earlier because their own items will have "more value" and increase in value - without the drawback of creating more assets for stretch goals to further leverage existing supporters (though you could consider more assets as well).

2. Have (a) limited time promotion(s) where purchasing a stretch goal benefits your pledge, or gives store credits. Consider giving some reward to people who already have purchased the stretch goals to prevent blowback from existing stretch goal supporters.

3.Vote on the Stretch Goals, or pick one yourselves and Feature one of them on the mainpage and newsletters until it is complete. Give it's % of funding completion, but also mention total Stretch Goal Funds raised beside it for all goals. These were dropped on the masses, all of them in rapid succession, then pretty much forgotten. If you get behind a stretch goal then the community can get behind it too.

The obvious goals to pick here (to me) are the mount goal or the flexible placement goal. Mount Goal because everyone can get behind this without owning property.

Flexible placement (my first pick) because almost everyone with a lot will appreciate this, some people will want a backyard... many want a bigger front yard. In some instances you need to move the house just to fit some of these structures on your lot - and this may invite further pledge upgrades because some people will upgrade to larger lots just because they can place multiple houses to rent out or have a small village/collection of homes, this would be really cool on a castle lot.

A note on the flexible placement package - I supported the flexible placement package (possibly before there was a picture, but definitely before I saw the item in-game) and realized later on that I will never be able to place the stables with the house size for my selected pledge unless I am at Duke or Lord of the Manor. The other items can be quite large as well - this alienates a number of backers who might otherwise support the goal - perhaps alternate size items can be produced or chosen from.

 

hmm, Actually Pack Animals is the most funded by percentage.

As of right now (by percentage of goal)

1. Pack Animals 5.6%
2. Mounts 4.6%
3. Placement 4.2%
4. Elves 3.1%
5. Boats 1.5%

As of right now (by percentage of money spent)

1. Mounts 25.9%
2. Placement 23.6%
3. Elves 21.1%
4. Boats 16.9%
5. Pack Animals 12.6%

So clearly we should push for Elves first!

 

I was just bitchin' somewhere about how the ball needs to get rolling before people would jump in. . . me included. Just thinking of the pressure of paying more if I wait makes me want to pledge. This is a good idea.

 

I think reasonable criticism is valuable and necessary.

I've been accused of being a blind zealot and too positive about this game, but I raise some criticism from time to time, as I think we all should.

 

A lot of people don't think any of these will get funded, so they won't open their wallets. That is why I think we should seriously push for pack animals even though I really like all 5 goals.

 

The reason I keep pushing Elves is really practical. All the other goals won't change in usefulness between releases, but since the vast majority of players can only have one character, the vast majority won't even consider playing an Elf after the first release because they already invested tons of time in an earthling. Hence, if Elves are not funded now, there probably wont be any unless all players can have additional characters down the road.

 

With a high enough pledge you get multiple character slots.

I am curious however what they will do if they added Elves in Episode 2 and told everyone you still had only one character slot. That just doesn't seem right. They'd either need to let people change their race, or grant a second character slot to be fair.

When SWTOR added Cathar as a new race, they let people buy a token to change your existing character to the race.

 

Unfortunately for the RP'ers, the Elvin lore wont convert easily from that of an earthing.

 

(1) Top-level stretch goal ideas (mounts, flexible placement, functional boats, etc.) come from the community, by way of idea submissions and votes.
(2) Portalarium proposes next level of detail for most popular ideas. Each idea has a number of features and attached to it is a cost to implement.
(3) Features ideas refined by community feedback.
(4) Players vote on features with their wallets. Contribution money is held for 60 days, and if the feature has enough funding money is taken for implementation, otherwise it goes back to feature backer.
(5) Once a feature is funded, it is added to the development queue, where only one feature is worked at a time.

 

How about making the stretch goal amounts reachable?

Majoria70 would be saying what Dr. Evil is saying, to me.... cuz really I have to bite my tongue on this subject and keep things positive, as she asked