What are your thoughts on Pay-to-Decorate?

There are now a number of major items or iterations of items that you can only decorate with if you pay for them. It appears the trend will continue. The engine of fundraising seems to move on inexorably.

How will this change the beauty of the world?
How will it affect the diversity of decorated homes?
Does this worry anyone else?

Personally, I'm a bit sad (5 out of 10) and a bit resentful (3 out of 10). I think the beauty of the world will be tarnished visibly by the disparity between the haves and have-nots. Or, the choose to buy and the choose nots.

SWAG seemed like the right place for this thread.

 

I do think the Kobold masks are fine in the Add-on. The difference is that they don't change the scenery so drastically. Some could argue it's a tax on role playing.

 

I am with you, I think, on these thoughts. I would like to see 99 out of 100 items in the game come from the game world itself and not from the online store. Decorating should be a direct result of gathering and crafting, be it if you create the item yourself or buy it from another player with gold from in the game itself.

Wholly in game items can be rare too! It doesn't have to come from the online store to be rare, and I hope that the devs agree. What will happen if all rares are in the store, some of the more single player game type people will be left out.

 

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I see the need for a continued cash flow (this has nothing to do with greed). On the other hand I was hoping there would be more community created assets in the game that would be available for free.

 

Most deco sold in store will just be variations on items you can get for gold or craft. We should see more in game deco option with the pass on crafting.

 

I see no reason at all to get worked up over a few inconsequential store items. Is there anything in the store that's going to change how anyone plays? Is anyone going to miss not having any of it?

How will it change the beauty of the world? Well if they're well made it would improve it.
How will it effect diversity of décor items? Obviously diversity will be improved because there's more of it.. so I don't think that's really the question (as worded). How it will effect non-store bought items.. it won't. They'll still be there and there will be plenty of them.
Does it worry anyone else? Not me obviously.

 

Well, getting a lot and house in game for gold is hard and since the housing is limited it will likely be impossible after release, so if prople spent hundreds of dollars to get a lot, what are few dozens of dollars for deco?

My point is, if the game is designed so only small part of backers is actually using the decoration system, it makes sense to let them pay for any extra development by these deco items in store. The other way would be to release new decorations into the game to get new backers, but these new backers (without village lot) would hardly get to use them. I am not quite happy about this direction, but the game is set for a long time in a way that only some people will have a lot to decorate and most of them will likely get the deed from their pledge.

 

I gave a sliding scale of 3 out of 10 and 5 out of 10. Totally not worked up. I just see a trend that seems based purely on cash and not on the beauty of the game they are trying to create.

I don't see the need. I understand the business plan but I've never seen Port's financials. They are nearing 7 mil and the profit from unit sales of E1 are not in yet. Seems like they are doing great. I admit I have no idea the cost of running this operation but there is no transparency here. They don't owe me transparency but it makes me wonder.

Or, if we have spent hundreds to thousands to get a pledge, why charge me $5 for trees, $X for fences, $X for pavers. I do see your point.

I hope this is true. I have noticed that what I consider to be the most beautiful or interesting of the variations comes with a price. Just might make for a bland world if the pretty stuff always costs money.

Like you all, I'll continue to wait and see.

 

The thread title simply asks what your thoughts are.. mine are it's nothing to get worked up over.. not necessarily directed at you. Though giving a sliding scale is wide open to interpretation without knowing what your version of a scale looks like.

 

Well I think it would be great if they sold town deco in the add in store, that is if we get to decorate our towns eventually. I am hoping for that or at least some ability to do that. As to raising more cash I hate the subject to come up at every moment. Please more cash for the game, perhaps 20 mil, or 40 mil, or even a lot more. There are 5 episodes to fund and a measly 7 mil is funding not much I bet. If this game is to have all of our wonderful ideas (of course I think mine are) are in the game imagine. Then we can say things like hey Dev team we need waterways and boating and bam we have waterways and boating and whatever else is appropriate for the type of game this is. That would be so amazing. This would not have to be a wonderful game made on a budget skimped on ,which I do not want to happen anyway. So Anyway thats how I feel about that topic as you probably already know. Also I agree that what is sold on the add in store as promised will have in game versions so no worries on that.

 

Can this not be accomplished through buying them in market places, vendors, from NPCs, as quest rewards, and insert many more options here? Not just strictly with hard earned IRL cash bucks?

 

Yes that was what i meant by more in game deco options.

 

Ok I understand! I thought you may have been indicating, more in game deco items available from the store. Thanks for clearing up

 

I wonder how they will differentiate in-game acquired trees, from these trees in the add-on store. The add-on store trees look pretty basic, rather than a special rare item (like Christmas trees, which made sense as add-on items). It's confusing.

Also, didn't the store use to have a disclaimer, stating that though add-on store items are unique, there are ways to acquire similar items in-game?

I should be able to put a tree in my yard without going out of the game to make a monetary purchase to do it....

 

Only problem with that is the limited market. Out of 10s of thousands of current backers there are only about 230 some odd towns.. some of which are owned by the same person. So around 200 or less actual town owners who could make use of town décor items. While I agree it would be cool it wouldn't be cost effective.

 

Yes that is true. I was just going by hints dropped by Darkstarr in the interview with Lazarus about how well the things are going with providing tools for the POT owners. So really just dreaming a bit and if more comes out of their progress with giving the POT owners more tool than expected that would be very great.

 

I suspect what will probably end up happening is that we'll have access to all town décor available but with a limit to how many we can place. We'll probably have a similar interface like what lots have now.

 

Most of town owners will buy town deco to personalize their town. Possibly multiple copies of the same decor. Right now the trees came out 5$ a pop and I can bet my socks that in average every town owner will get at least 3 copies. This alone will give you 200x15$ = 3000$. And those are 5$ - cheapest stuff possible. When real town deco comes out it will most probably cost more (15$+ if I would have to guesstimate). And you really need only 1 artist to come up with 3-10 separate items like that per month. I think it's safe to assume it earns much more than it costs to make so it is profitable enough to do (not as profitable as house decorations, but still profitable).

They can literally hire 1 artist who would make only city decor and they would still earn more than they pay him

As for my thoughts about paying for decor - I'm all for it. It's either that or monthly subscription fees for everyone. The servers, bug fixing and expanding on the content throughout the game lifespan are not cheap things without this sort of stuff the game will simply die.

I wouldn't worry about diversity of decorations. Even now we have much much more free items to decorate with than the exclusive pay-only items (which will probably be sold by players for lots of gold anyway)

 

Let me put it this way.. would you make a $20 item that only 200 or so people can buy (let alone might buy)? Or a $5 item that 20,000+ people might buy? With a small team pressed to make content you can't reasonably do both so which do you choose?

 

Why can't you do both? It's just a matter of hiring 1 guy for POT deco really. Look at Star Citizen - they hire guys just to make concept ships that they put on sale later and literally make millions of dollars WITHOUT taking anyone from the team away from the game.