YOUR PLEDGE OPINIONS PLEASE

I've pledged at the Baron level, and would really like to move up to Duke. I need to do some budgeting before I'll be comfortable with that.

For me, following the process of this game from concept to product is worth the pledge. Ideally I would like to know the roadblocks/problems they encounter, and how they overcome them.

Am I pledging for the wrong reason? I doubt that Portalarium would think so. Different people will have different motives, but as long as our desires are likely to be met then I see no problem. Some people want to pledge as a thank-you for the past games. Some probably pledge because they want to see a new Ultima-7 style game. Some, because they want a new UO style game. Some because they wanted to watch the devs do the chicken dance.

 

Kickstarter/SotA website is not the only money invested in this.

 

I say pledge.
Yea I'm worried that things will be dumbed down from the UO days.
But if there is any team that can bring back those days, this is it.

 

A well thought-out list.

With Unity, I don't think the size is fine. A huge element of a game like this is content. So if you consider the crowd-sourcing of dungeons, models etc... they have a "dev team" considerably larger.

Yes, an aggressive schedule. But they have a fairly playable demo at present. I'll bet they meet the date with something reasonable.

I think this is the only way a company smaller than SOE or Blizzard could be successful.

See niche market...

I think this is the most serious threat facing Portalarium. They cannot be all things to all people. Managing expectations
is going to be critical. If you think about your ideal game; they aren't likely to make that. But they might get acceptably close.

See "high expectations"...

I don't understand. Not to say that you're wrong.

Most of that money has already been collected. I'm not sure what Kickstart's share was, but I bet that almost 2 million was transferred to Portaliarium the day the Kickstart ended.

Anyone who doesn't make a mistake isn't trying hard enough. We can blame a lot of problems on the companies he partnered with, but he still owns those problems. That he is managing to avoid such partnerships this time around speaks well of him.

I don't feel that I've been seeing mixed messages. I see a lack of detail; which I find reasonable for this stage. But I think we have received a consistent message on important issues. Some people may read more into Portalarium's statements than was intended.

 

I actually pledged to knight level in hopes that I will have a nice home in what I believe and refer to as UO2. I won't argue the fact that it's not UO2..I just personally believe and hope that SotA is just that. At least it's brother...they have the same dad you know.

 

My pledge was on faith based on the history of what Richard has done in the past. I have no doubt in my mind that SotA will be an amazing game because he's got the creative ability without constraints he's had in the past from publishers and because I think a lot along the same lines as he thinks. I believe he can make a game that caters to everyone no matter their play style that makes them happy. I'm sure it won't come without some trial and error, but that's what being a pioneer in an industry is about: trying new things, seeing what works, find out what makes people enjoy your creation. He's trying to find the common denominator where everyone can enjoy his world and I feel he will succeed beautifully.

That is why I pledged.

 

You can see a full list of reasons why I think a Vendor Economy is bad news, here: http://evilgrief.com/2013/08/03/top-5-reasons-not-to-have-a-vendor-based-economy/

I'm very impressed with the development team and Richard circa 2013. Still, when you mess up once that's not such a big deal. When you mess up twice, that's a trend. I've messed up multiple times picking winning development teams, the odds are against me being right.

I understand that it's difficult to manage a community like this while you're making decisions that may change day to day. But the FAQ's section isn't even very helpful (yes FireLotus, I read you were in the process of updating that with community support). I guess if I were making a game like this and I wanted to spend my time wisely on "development" I would expect to have a better understanding of what the plan was by now.

How will the mechanics of Death, PVP, Stealing, Combat, work? What's the goal?

Richard has had how many years to work through all this in his mind? The development team has how many years of experience? Again, I'm super impressed with this team. They all seem very bright and thoughtful of the pros and cons of these decisions. But if you're not sure how this all works out now, I don't see how it's going to get any better in the future as money dries up and time slips away. They should have one message, this is what the game is and this is what the game is not; in my humble opinion.

 

I also pledged because there is great hope in this game to be something that other games are not. I'm tired of playing the dumbed down games that hold your hand from a to b. I want to discover things and get the feeling of an accomplishment when you actually manage to find what you are looking for.

Personally i love the concept of this not being an MMO nor a single player game. Selective multiplayer with other online features (housing, economy) is just what i'm looking for. This works great for casual gamers also.

I'd say any game that shows potential is worth pledging if you have the extra cash. I'd go for around $25 or whatever level gets you the game. It's not a bad price to pay for something that might be awesome. I've bought crappy games with box prices ($60+) before and i'm positive my money is spend here better.

@Goblin King

I also didn't really get what you ment by vendor economy not working. Are you talking about NPC vendors or player run vendors? Mostly the devs have been talking about player owned vendors to sell your own wares. Personally i think it's a great leap to old skool and way better than AH.

 

In truth, I'm still very happy with my pledge and will be until proven otherwise. I'm over citizen level, mostly for the dev stuff, but my wife wanted a house too.

Here's the deal, if you look at Richard Garriott's work, Ultima's III through VII part 1 were under his direction and no one else trying to push him in a box. They were all stellar and ground breaking. Each one pushing gaming further and doing so successfully.

And then publisher's happened. The games they had control over were chopped to fit in their boxes. You could still see the intended greatness in them if you tilt your head and squint, but I don't hold him accountable for people not getting what he's doing. You can't push forward and do the safe thing at the same time. And no publisher wants to take that risk.

It's easy for me to blame them for the lower quality of his last games in the industry, but even with them being so damaged. Kickstarter and our pledges is a way of us telling him those games you did when the publishers didn't believe in you? We did. And still do... make more like that. Sure, this could all go pear shaped and it turns out it wasn't the publishers after all, but that's not where the smart money's at. The man knows gaming, enough to know how to break the rules and give us something new.

I have only one pause or hesitation, and that's the rumors of the combat system. But I trust him. When given the room to do his thing, he's never settled. We've given him the room, now we just have to wait.

All of that said, I hope you reconsider talking about what made you concerned. The dev team seems very open to listening to us, and they are actually on here from time to time. If nothing else, think about pulling one of us aside and asking us about it in confidence would also be an idea. This method of asking the public to swing at ghosts hopping we kill the one that's yours seems impossible.

 

http://evilgrief.com/2013/08/03/top-5-reasons-not-to-have-a-vendor-based-economy/

The devs have talked about manually adjusting the amount of gold that NPC vendors will give to players for items as a way to manage the macro economy and keep prices "fair". I don't think this approach works.

 

So what do you think will happen if it doesn't work?

 

That's an excellent question. The short answer is that the economy has harmful inflation and deflation, but ultimately it becomes incredible and unmanageable inflation that can only be met with exponential gold sinks. The end result being an economy that makes little to no sense and serves best the gold farmers and least the legitimate players (especially the new players).

Think of it like this. Let's say that day one you can buy a "decent" sword from an NPC vendor for 200 gold. The NPC's never run out of these swords so the lowest you should ever have to pay for a "decent" sword is 200 gold. Now let's say that players begin to craft a "better" sword and they sell it for 1000 gold. The recipe for such a sword requires the following ingredients: 20 Iron and 5 Wood. So where does the extra 800 gold come from? That's what players are willing to pay.

However, remember that "decent" sword that costs 200 gold? That only requires 5 Iron and 1 Wood to make. Meaning that if you can find 5 Iron and 1 Wood, you have a choice, you can either sell the sword to an NPC for let's say 20 gold, or you could undercut the NPC merchant and sell those swords for 50 gold.

Here's where the devs come in. What they're going to do is look at all these transactions and adjust the price the NPC's are willing to buy and sell for. So the price of the "decent" sword will need to come down from 200 gold to something where the profit margins are much less for people that are just making these stupid swords purely for the guaranteed gold (gold farmers).

Meanwhile, the devs also have to watch out for the players that are selling the "better" sword because they don't want new players to have to jump over mountains to get "better" items. So they will likely decrease the amount of money the NPC vendors will sell the same items for. This will artificially decrease the price on the open market for the "better" sword to something much closer to whatever the NPC price is.

By now your head should be spinning because you have to apply that same model to EVERYTHING in the game. How will the devs balance this? How will you keep inflation and deflation artificially in balance without giving gold away to the farmers who will continually push the limits of the economy because of the very system you created to stop them from doing this? You won't, they can't, and no one ever has. It's a horrible system.

 

Interesting. However, I think you're skipping the part where if one guy sells his "better" sword for 1000g, then the guy next to him is going to sell it for 900g, and so on, until it becomes either not worth making them because the profit isn't there, or people just decide that it's not worth finding a guy who sells it cheaper because their time is worth more.

There is one thing that we may be able to agree upon. Portalarium should strongly consider hiring an economist to not only monitor the system, but help design it.

 

I recently played Scrolls, a card trading game (it's poorly designed btw). The best cards you can obtain sell for around 1500 gold on average. That's just some arbitrary price that players have generally agreed is "fair" for the best cards. If you play long enough, you'll get these cards and you can decide what you want to do with them. Do you want to sell them back to the game for 100 gold? Do you want to sell them to the open market of players for maybe as much as 2000 gold?

It's really up to you. But if you're just some guy that happens to have one of these cards then it's probably not going to be as simple as saying "I have card X for sale, 2000 gold!" You have to find a willing buyer, and there are like 300 people selling the same card for anywhere between 1.3k and 2k, so if you want to undercut the other sellers...you can. But it's not going to drive down the price unless you have a TON of merchandise.

The same rules will apply to SotA, and if the devs do a great job with the economy then it won't be easy to have a TON of merchandise without risking a TON of losses. The Vendor Based Economy doesn't do that. Nor does Scrolls.

Yes, there we agree. However, if I won the lottery tomorrow and bought Portalarium, my first edict would be "Don't hire an economist, just use the basic market forces of the players and you'll be fine. Economy system designed, developed, tested, and approved. Next?"

 

Supply and demand. If there is low demand, it doesn't matter what it cost for you to make it, few people will want to buy it. If there is low demand, supply will fall until it can successfully meet what little demand exists. SotA doesn't need to hire an economist to tell them that.

 

I don't know which answer you want to find, but you will have a hard time to convince people to buy something, that's not even finished, if they have no contact to the subject at all. I don't even try to convince my friends. I tell them what i have done and that they can do the same thing, if they want. If they ask me why i had pledged, i tell them the i was just curious. My pledge tier isn't that high, just royal artisan, because that's the sum what i have to invest, when I buy a new game in the store. I'm thinking about raising my pledge, but i give me time. I want to see what the alpha will bring. If your not convinced by the actual state of developpement but you want to be part of it, then just pledge the minimum to be part of it and wait. You have time to raise your pledge and get the benefits from the time when you pledged first.

 

My wife and I both went in at Royal Artisan because of RG's history and reputation (and the rewards at that level were all we wanted as far as rewards go), and after going in for a life time deal on Star Trek Online for $300.00 each and that being a total bust for me, I'm never spending that kind of money sight-unseen again.
**I have dyslexia and a fairly serious case of dyscalculia and memory issues, I loved the space battles but couldn't navigate my ship from zone to zone or really figure out the quest log. So STO is basicly unplayable for me.**

I personaly will judge SoTA against Guild Wars 1 and 2, if it's almost as good I'll be satisfied. If it's better then I'll be more then satisfied. If in my opinion SoTA is on par with GW1, I will consider it well worth the money I've spent on it.

 

I have had my facepalm moments, but never any regrets concerning my pledge, between my husband and I our highest being at owning a house level.

Goblin King mentioned something that I believe should get priority if SotA is looking for new backers, the FAQ. Finding semi concrete information about the game
is probably a tedious process for anyone new to this site. Personally I am not a big fan of looking through hours of video, much rather have important official information written, and
in a location easy to spot for folks late to the game.

 

If you read the forum, everyone has things they think should be done differently. The "secret issue" of the OP is not that big a deal if you ask me. I pledged a lot because I want the devs to design the game, not me. It's a bet that THEY (not I) will create a great game. It helps too that I want to be open to a new experience, not one that conforms to my expectations. If it were to all blow up (and it won't) it still would be a great experience that has made me think about a lot of different things on a lot of different levels.

 

We all pledge to get something out of it, just like in any other capitalist venture where we give our money to get something in return. The difference here is that we're backing a Kickstarter project, not pre-ordering a game. The way you expressed yourself sounded to me as if your pledge - the money you're investing - is going to yield you a game that has all its features already defined and settled, with a specific release date. That, as I see it, is what pre-orders are about, and are totally different from backing, or pledging, to a Kickstarter project.

I created a topic here about the then newly-released Shadowrun Returns game, which is also an offspring of Kickstarter. In that topic I mentioned how disappointed I was with the final product and what were the other members' thoughts on how it turned out based on the initial goals, funds, development time etc. Even though I wasn't a backer for that project, I'm quite confident, from what I've seen so far, that SotA has a very talented and committed team, which addresses the community very frequently and is ease to reach. Of course, not everything is perfect, and I'm a bit skeptical about some of the design decisions, but that is to be expected from everything, and it's still too early in development to have a very good grasp of what will come of it. So far, I've been getting more excited as I watch the podcasts and follow up on the official updates.

In the end I think it is exactly as Owen said: you can't approach a crowd-funding project expecting to get something that is totally controllable, and that is going to come out exactly as the initial goals were. If you do that you're bound to be disappointed.