This will break the game. And no, I'm not trolling.

Yes, I can see your side of the argument. It's what's called Pay 2 Win. No matter how people want to dance around definitions, it is clearly what this would serve in the game. They aren't willing to invest the time like everyone else, so they pay to make up for what they can't achieve otherwise.

 

This is pretty much the exact way I feel. Personally I would prefer a monthly sub, but that ship has sailed. They need a in flow of cash to keep the lights on and this will propably do it in scores. I've even been tempted to dump some cash in the shop, haven't yet because I'd like to get up to "citizen" level more. (Gotta scrape those pennies together and pray I get to it before it's to late."


As for,is it pay to win? It is cutting close to it IMHO! But if someone wants to buy thier way thru the game... their loss. I will be enjoying the journey there.

 

Firstly, this line of discussion you are quoting steams from my post about others in this thread who are just saying 'boycott' 'won't play' and various other ultimatums.

In context I posted it as not directed at te OP.

Secondly my post at the start of the discussion my quotes here are following states that a boycott is not useful when it is reaction to a mechanic that is unannounced.

It is, as far as I can tell just Darkstarr sharing his thoughts on how Py to Win is defined through how he interprets it.

There has been no announcements to support it's includsion yet and ire directed towards the devs is an overreaction.

Stating you don't like it is great. Let's discuss the topic because if this is planned now is the time to discuss it.

But unless you state the reasons why you don't like the system is of little benefit to the Dev team as they cannot open a dialogue with a closed statement

• " don' want gold to be sold because when it does get sold I feel it will provide an unfair advatage to other players"
• "I don' want gold selling because I believe it will inflate the cost of goods and make them unattainable without RMT
• I don;t want gold selling because you stated here you would not fo it.

These can be discussed and either fears can be shown to be inconsistent with the planned design, or the dev team can take on the feedback and make changes as they have shown they are willing to do (the Founder's Knights home redesign for example.)

The statement "If this is in the game, I am out" offers no room for discussion or compromise and does not acknoweldge your fellow backers who may see the value in this system.

So lets discuss the pros and cons, not fight over which group has the biggest ultimatum.

My original post I outlined the pro's I felt were in herint in the system and I just wanted to encourage others to post their pro's or con's instead of closed statements.

 

I propose they make a bullet point summary of the main story plot and the ending cutscene a $20 item in the store. It'd also flag your character as having completed it.

 

Hyperbole is not evidence of a good argument

And that's not able to be monetised when it's going to be on Youtube

 

Except time poor not having much time to play has no detrimental effects to the overall game experience for others, while issues such as inflation caused by the sale of in game currency directly affect every player.
I am all for players having their freedom as long as it does not affect other players game experience negatively.

If it does it will hurt the longevity of the game and ultimately also their revenue.

 

Hey, let's get our juices flowing here. Let's insert the middle episodes, like Ep2. You can max out your skill stats and be able to one hit kill every player for an additional $20.

Edit: Hey, anything to make a buck and keep the game going

 

I sense some business opportunities for Portalarium.
How about selling information about bugs that can be used to crash the server, for like 5,000$ maybe?
Or how about enabling people to have the database drop a character of one of your mortal enemies, for a mere 10,000$ ?

So many opportunities ...

 

This is starting to get silly and nonconstructive ...

 

Actually choosing to cater for the majority of players who are less likely to play as many hours per week as 'dedicated players' and keeping them engaged provides a higher population for the time rich to interact to, a more robust customer base for the developers and overall a better game experience as it is more finacial profitable and viable to expand beyond what it would be with just the top time rich players staying engaged.

Nothing exsists in a vacuum except for square chickens.

 

Can you provide me with the conditions that are required to be met so I can confirm I have 'Won' the game?

 

Gold buying is a big business. I think people might be surprised how many players might be swayed toward SOTA with this decision rather than against it. Admittingly, I am not an MMO player, but I know tons of them. All of them have purchased gold: even for games they were risking getting banning for doing so.

I understand why some people don't like. I am not a fan myself, but I doubt very seriously RTM, if used, will cause much harm at all. If fact I would wager that even if there was a huge backlash even the small number that stayed and bought gold could keep the game profitable with the right exchange rate. In the end, its going to happen anyway unless you have a pure vendor run economy. You will still have robber barons buying up land and items or whatever. The difference is Portalarium gets nothing from this, and players risk being scammed. Most MMOs learned this and provided some sort of out of game system.

I think as long as gold is not magically destroyed it would not be a big deal to the economy. For example, what if gold was finite. Say players can craft gold into coin and farm gold from encounters. They use that gold to buy items which goes into a pool. From this pool gold is sold for real money. This creates a cycle in which gold is not magically injected into the economy but is more tangible. It exist through effort of the players. I kind of like the idea of a two way system like RG mentioned where I could actually make real cash for items and content I provide in-game.

TOS could still restrict being able to sell things on eBay, and Portalarium could get stuff like this taken down. eBay even has mechanisms to auto-close stuff based on certain goods. Add to that an in-game, sponsered way of handling this and black markets will not be as popular. Kind of like piracy is reduced for content that is made available. Game of Thrones is highly pirated because it is limited in availablility (release windows unless you have cable AND HBO). Content that is easier to get legally tends to be trafficked less.

Definitely looking forward to getting more information on this, but that can be said for a lot of SOTA features.

 

If a game allows transactions of gold for cash/cash for gold it should be ONLY BETWEEN PLAYERS like the current system in Blade and Soul. By doing this, inflation is not directly being created (see below), the company gets a small cut out of every transaction (like an auction house fee), and players that want to buy and sell gold effectively have security in doing so.

The real disadvantage to this system is that it does not discourage gold farming, because players can legally and easily sell gold in-game. However, one tactic that Blade and Soul used to prevent the gold farming was to make the 'cash' (that the seller receives on his end for selling the gold) only usable to purchase items in the game shop, so nobody could actually make national currency profits off of the transactions except for the company. (Equally, the purchaser has to first purchase 'game points' from the game shop to use as 'cash' to purchase the gold from another player) I imagine a large amount of gold farming was simply erased because of this and it likely made the game economy healthier overall, because it somewhat discouraged gold farming on the one hand and on the other hand it did not create inflation other than what was designed from natural in-game progressions.

In a game using this system, there will be people that actually want to sell their gold for euros/yuan/dollars etc. and they would be forced to sell lower than the market price if the company decided to force the cash shop purchases with gold selling profits like in Blade and Soul. If the company doesn't force the cash shop transaction, then they would make more money on the transaction fees because they would likely almost completely erase any black market selling, making profit on many more transactions, but would not make as much profit on every transaction because of not forcing 'game point' purchases from the cash.

That being said I will give my opinion on the forum topic...

SotA is already effectively selling gold for cash with the houses, deeds and items in the shop because they presumably can be traded in game for gold, as stated in (some) of their descriptions.

However, the housing is very limited and the items being sold don't create inflation unless they can be sold to vendors for gold.

By creating a mechanism to purchase/create gold with cash （by this, I mean in the direct, literal sense of gold duping if a player purchases it from their shop and they create it 'out of thin air' to give to the player based on his/her purchase), the dev team would be effectively creating a P2W game and is sabotaging their own project before it even launches because of the way inflation will destroy the game people expected to have (that is, a game with a healthy, functioning trade/crafting/economic system).

A game should have a self-sustaining, closed economy (with regards to gold creation and gold sinks) in order to function favorably. Opening Pandora's Gold Box will create an uncontrollable situation that nobody wants, even for the players who purchase gold, not to mention the resentment that will echo throughout the community.

For anyone who may have influence over these decisions and happens to be reading this I would like to say to you the following: there are many ways to make profits on your new MMO, but the more you 'try' to make money, the more likely your game will degrade along with your greed. There is a healthy balance of financial sustainability, growth and a desirable game experience. In the perspective of what you have here with SotA I would highly recommend you avoid creating anything that is even interpreted as P2W by a portion of your player base even if you have a different opinion. People come to these games to leave or escape reality for a while (or all the time depending on the person) and don't even want to see or sense a trace of it there, especially not in the form of using out of game cash to gain 'perceived' advantages in the game. I'm not going to go into details why this perception exists, because it can be argued both ways 'logically' until the end of time by using 'one player gets to play more than the other anyway' etc. type of arguments, but the perception does exist and I hope that you, for the sake of a large portion of the community, handle this business model very delicately as it has the potential to give your game a great image or destroy it by creating a perception of P2W.

You have the opportunity right now to be gathering the opinion of your player base on this healthy balance and I would highly recommend you use it to gauge sentiments rather than stubbornly do what you 'feel' is appropriate. I would also mention, albeit reluctantly, that while keeping gold selling on the black market may create some gold farming issues and perhaps others, it also has the advantage of keeping those transactions where they should be, out of sight and out of mind, which strengthens the status of the game as a get-away-from-reality haven for many players. This haven idea and the idea of being on equal, 'fair' footing with other players in the game were traditionally upheld by the idea that cash for gold type of transactions were not only somewhat 'unethical', but also illegal. I understand that sentiment with regards to this concept may have 'changed' slightly or somewhat over the years depending on the person, but that does not mean, under any circumstance, that the concept has become less important with regards to the player base or its effect on the game itself.

 

My experience is quite to the opposite. The vast majority casual players do not want to spent money on in-game benefits, but many pay to win games rely on an arms race instead, where people get frustrated by others having purchased benefits and then follow up themselves. Most of those games do not have any kind of longevity.

In most games I play I am a casual player, often not playing for months at a time just to be very active for a short while.
Many of my friends and colleagues have very few time for gaming, yet when I showed them the kickstarter rewards, those busy bodies were still concerned about pay to win.

 

And yet you seem to be thinking of official gold selling in isolation - only how it relates to the people buying it and how it saves them time in game. You don't seem to be considering the consequences for the game as a whole and how the situation might look in 12 or 24 months time for everyone - not just that one person buying gold straight from the Bank of New Britannia with real dollars.

In the mind of a lot of people it is framed as a simple fairness thing. You invest time and effort in something and you get rewarded for it even if it is something as mundane as picking mushrooms or killing monsters over and over. It applies to all kinds of things and people generally agree that is fair. When you introduce money that allows you to buy your way ahead - well that is what upsets people and starts to muddy the waters. For many people it just doesn't seem "right" or "fair". That is why people see it as an issue if Portalarium were to ever introduce gold selling and why this thread is already a million pages at the mere possibility the idea isn't off the table yet.

Anyway, you mentioned the time poor/money rich, and the money poor/time rich, but what about the people with little time and little money? How do they make up for that shortfall? I guess they're just screwed, right? =P

 

I've not read the last 4 post since they are a bit on the long side but I feel that they are making some good points

I'm not a fan of Portalarium selling gold - simply because it opens the door/creates an avenue to destabilize the economy

- I do not think that players creating gold - as a resource - for a pot to sell gold (as Umbare mentions) leads to the same effect of inflation ... the only thing this does is legally incorporated into a game mechanic

- I prefer that SoTA sells houses for cash until a month or so before lunch
- That they keep the store open for any items people would like to purchase

In other words make it so a player does not need to buy gold to purchase in game items ... if these items are offered by the in game store there is no need for gold farmers

- Although the housing issue will be unresolved; I think that people that "don't have the time" or players that "don't have the cas/unwilling to spend the cash" need to be equality SOL

What I mean is get gold the old fashion or take the risk on the black market ...

I also would like for Portalarium to assign each lot deed a identifying number assigned to an account - CREATE a way for player to sell deeds to one another and take a cut ... let Portalarium wet their beak

 

If you want to do it Eve style, include open PvP, and the winner gets the looser's house and everything in it.

I'm not suggesting that, but that's how it works in Eve.

 

Players have bought and sold items and gold in every mmo in history.
It doesn't matter what anyone says, it's going to happen regardless.

I've never done it personally on a black market, but I did play Diablo3 for the fact they had a real money auction house. Ever sinse they announced they were dropping it I never touched the game again, simply because the game wasn't fun imo.

 

That is the gentlest dis I've heard in quite a while, it almost makes me want to log off and not come back...

 

Well it would seem reasonable to work towards satisfying people that

a) have time to play your game

or

b) have the disposable income to buy your game

Suggesting that those who are the least likely to have either of these 'resources' should be a primary focus in development just seems to be impractical.

I suspect you are just using exceptions to prove your point.

Let me clarify something. At no point have I suggested that a gold buying system without limits or checks and balances be employed.

In fact the responses I got where simply aimed at what were really side points about maintaining a positive and open discussion between those of us who want to enjoy SOTA.

Not one reference has been made by anyone who has disagreed with me to the benefits I perceive having a controlled RMT in the game brings, rather then uncontrolled RMT.

There is no choice on gold RMT being in SOTA. the choices are limited to the extent of it's presence and the providers of the gold service; whether it is legitimate with Portalarium's input or not.

So if you wish to continue to just point out perceived inconsistencies in my post then fine. I'm sure everyone is capable of doing that with any post they please.

if on the other hand you'd like to discuss the specific affects of one or the other, then maybe this thread will become a valuable resource of ideas instead of a place of Reductio ad absurdum