The COTO store should count toward the Livestream

The on-line store where you bought things with money that went toward the Livestream rewards is gone. How are we supposed to advance the Livestream totals? The R63 Livestream total has not even made it to the first reward yet!

Can we get a $ value of the COTO store purchase and have it applied toward the Livestream?

If not the Livestream rewards are going to be dismal and the income usually generated will be very low.

 

Buying the COTOs is what goes towards the livestream totals. You then spend those on what you want. Otherwise, you're talking about redundantly re-allocating money that was already fundraised.

 

Greetings oplek
I understand the double dipping as it is but not everyone buys their COTOs from the store. Some are gotten thru drops and some are bought on the forums at a much lower price. Assuming we are only talking about COTO drops and the fact they they are dropping a lot more of them now, what not allow them to count toward the Livestream? And if you are one of the MANY buying COTO on the forums, and not letting them count toward the Livestream that would seem to imply you are trying to control the price or the relevance of them. Which do you think happens more often, people buy COTOs from the store or people buy COTOs in the forums?

 

I have plenty of gripes about the telethon system they have, but raising new funds is literally the only reason the telethons exist. The funds tracker for the livestream is all about what new funds were raised. COTOs that drop in-game, or COTOs bought from other people, aren't new funds.

 

I'm also not in favor of rewarding RMT more than we can get away with.

 

The point of the livestream is to help raise revenue for the company. The stretch goals are to encourage new money to come in to Portalarium to continue to develop the game. The goals are incentives to purchase from the developers to support their efforts financially.

The point of the telethon was always to allow players to further contribute to the funding of the game while earning stretch goals as they were achieved.

Including CotOs aquired in games or through player trading would inflate the dollar amount and require Portalarium to deliver more stretch goals without bringing in more actual funds.

 

I gust think that the biggest source of income comes from the COTO store and not the COTOs sold thru the add-on store. The purchases of COTO thru the add-on store pale in comparison to the 100 of thousands of COTOs that people have sitting in their bank, especially when you consider that translators were paid in COTO (handsomely) for translating dialog and web pages in the past. More to be made from COTO store in game than COTO purchases thru add-on store.

 

I bow to the majority I just think there is a better way. And the income of the the past several Livestreams seems to back this up. When there was a way to spend money in the add-on store to count toward the Livestream we were reaching $125k and $205k. Now that the add-on store is limited to COTOs, Stretch Goals and a few other items we will probably not make the $45k. Come on people prove me wrong by reaching the Darkstarr Trident. ;-)

PS raising revenues and new money count the same toward the budget.

 

It doesn't matter where you get your COTOs, all COTO come from the Source, Portalarium.

The Source metes out COTO in a few ways:

- Giveaways, including pledge/bundle cotos, testing rewards, survey rewards, event rewards. etc. These are giveaway cotos. They did not earn Portalarium any money so they should not count toward the monthly livestream fundraising.
- Rewards program COTOs, the 9$ a month subscription. These 9$ per months are being counted toward monthly goals (as far as I'm aware...).
- Straight up purchases.

If you buy COTOs from a reseller, they came originally from the source. The reseller either bought them, or bought them from people who bought them, or got them via one of the many giveaway methods. The "whether they count" or not was already established with their provenance.
Further to that, the monies get applied to the stretch goals at the moment when portalarium got the money.

This makes the most sense, really -

If I go and buy $100 worth of COTO in say, December, then they counted toward the livestream. If I resell them to someone in January, and the person who bought them, spends them on stuff in game...Portalarium isn't getting any more money for that. They got their money in December, so it counted in December.

Fundamentally, nothing has changed.
If you want to buy a fancy cherry tree, you have to go buy COTO first now. If you buy coto from another player, whenever/wherever those coto were sold initially it already counted toward a goal. If you buy coto direct, it counts, because its new spend. It seems pretty simple to me?

 

Port gains nothing from the actual use of the coto to buy anything with coto, they only make money if new coto(s) are purchased or new subscriptions happen. Period.

 

No.

The COTOs spent in-game came from real-world money that could have been spent months ago, or even from an in-game drop. The rule is to spend new money NOW because the money from months ago doesn't help keep the lights on. It's that simple. Although I would have liked to see an option for $6 which would go to $5 during the usual monthly sales. But it's not much difference between $6 and $9, and the Rewards Program also gives you some obsidian potions that can be resold, while also removing the need to do it at just the right time.

I just set up my four accounts with the RP, I was buying the $9 COTO pack anyhow (which is now down from 9 old cotos to 750 new cotos, so even less useful), and often buying a larger item. Now that the in-game store works well, I can go back to pooling what I spent on all four characters into a larger item, so I'll probably come out slightly ahead.

 

Disagree.

The Livestream stretch goals are to encourage new money. There are hordes of old CotO in game that were bought long ago, or granted through pledge rewards. They also drop in-game for free.

 

I think with the new changes we will see a small dip for a short time until the "Old" COTO's leave the system through the new changes. If there was an abundance in game circulating they will be burned through faster now with the new changes which then will create after the fact an increase in purchases once again. I have already seen a few Crown vendors empty out since the release of lot upgrades for crowns.

 

0 dollars are made directly via purchases in the CotO store. The only way that Portalarium makes money is giving them US dollars. Giving them CotOs in the store gives them CotOs, an in game currency. The only way Portalarium makes any money via CotOs is through the purchase of CotOs for real world dollars.

When you make a purchase from the CotO store, it seems you believe your 500 CotO purchase gives Portalarium $5. It does not. Your purchase gives them nothing. The money is made when CotOs are purchased not in game when items are purchased.

 

There were other factors in reaching those totals. R61 reached up to around $200k, but that was over 2 months which had significant discounts including 20% off Crowns and 50% off most of the store. R60 before that included the same discounts as well as expirations on certain items.

There will obviously be a transition period. You are right, there are CotOs in circulation and this will prevent some people from purchasing new CotOs on the site. However, those CotOs will leave circulation through purchases and new CotOs will have to be purchased from the site.

This is probably another reason why you see temporary incentives for spending on the store now. The faster CotOs are pulled out of circulation, the faster purchases of CotOs from the site will increase.

 

Well this will be the problem for about, hum, a 4 - 6 months time frame. Since player who have any intelligence bought and acquired ALOT of Cotos when they where .10 - .30 $ cheaper and will use them to buy thing they want / need. Only when they run out will those player buy more, If they doo.

Now if you want the rewards then you will shell out the $ for a batch of Cotos, or start a subscription.

If not have a nice game and wherever you are headed.

In the end this will be a cleaning out of those who are trying to profit themselves and those actually backing the game.

 

You can also buy them from other players for in-game gold. That was intended from the start when they were first added to the game.

It may be surprising to you, but people run coto exchanges without getting any RMT "profit" out of it, assuming that was your implication. In particular, I've heard that Titania is doing this in-game only, and I do it in-game only as well. It's fun, and I feel that IGG is too inflationary these days, while cotos have been steadily increasing in IGG value, so I feel that sitting on excess IGG is wasteful. I even still have a bunch of cotos that I've been leaving in my rewards list.