Are People Here Really Ok With This Sort of Thing?

$15/mo in ESO does not get you everything either, it gets you all the DLC and 1500 crowns/month enough to buy two basic room decoration packs but the real reason people pay for it is the infinite crafting bag. But if you want a cheaper store, your money goes further there. You will still end up paying cash for a living large house with purple decorations as they have made sure the grind is unachievable in game (saw someone calc it will take them a decade of daily grind at current drop rates) , and any game chapter expansions which they just invented so people have to buy Morrowind.

But none of the decorative items in SOTA are things anyone needs to play the game. You can play the game just fine with a public bank storage and public crafting stations are everywhere. The game only ever needs to cost you only $40 buy to play. So yes rich people can haz more shiney stuff than you, but that does not mean they can kill a dragon or you any better. Even better the richest people live in their own POT instance, and you never ever have to go there to play the game, so you do not even need to see that they exist.

 

I agree that it does come off like a game for rich people. BUT I also feel like every single gamer wants their pixels to have serious value.

 

My bottom line is that when I can purchase a new game for $50 or one digital fluffy bunny for Shroud for the same price, I'm going with an entire game. When I can buy five or six items in the add-on store for the same price as a console...again, my choice is clear. I'd rather spend money on an entire console. In fact, that is a choice I made a couple weeks ago.

That translates to lost revenue for the sustainability of the game. Will the absence of my $400 contribution (that I just spent on a console) make much of a difference? No. Will 10,000 people who say the same thing? I little moreso.

 

I hear what you're saying in a general sense but money isn't THAT hard to make in ESO if you know what you're doing. I made 150,000 gold this past weekend, and 40,000 of that was by selling one (count 'em, one), Aetherial Dust. It's a reasonably rare drop, granted, but if you know what it's worth when you get one -- and find a buyer -- happy days. But even more mundane stuff like the Kuta runestone will sell for 3000 gold and, in all seriousness, I get 2-3 Kuta per game session, just by taking the time to stop and harvest runestones -- something I'm sure many people find "boring". When you consider that 50,000 - 100,000 gold will buy some really nice stuff (sure, not huge manor houses with a dozen rooms but NICE housing that you can decorate to your heart's content), it's clear that ESO housing is very, very affordable WITH IN-GAME CURRENCY, and not putting your hand in your pocket "for real money" once. This isn't supposition, this is how I'm playing the game right now.

Included here in the name of balance.

 

Last I checked, repackaging assets from a third party source and charging more than the base product for cosmetic items isn't a proven strategy for any successful game company. Port may prove that position wrong, but I wouldn't bet good money on it.

Many of us tried to point that out years ago, the key to success was to release a functional yet restricted vertical slice of the game to drive new sales until the slice can be expanded to the full product, that's been the formula for most Early Access success stories. Port opted to focus development on the highest source of revenue, resulting in a slice that isn't a full vertical and that is lumpy around one particular area.

I'm no fan of subs, let folks sub for a discount on premium currency, have premium currency pay rent and premium content with ingame-premium currency conversions managed in game. Port had the chance for SotA to escape the niche market and draw from a larger pool, but instead they doubled-down on niche and serving the desires of their current customers, well at least a subset of them.

It is a profit center because it is a closed loop. From an accounting standpoint you could segregate the entire Asset-scouting to Addon-monitization loop from the rest of the enterprise and it would be generating a profit for the company and little else. I'm not saying this is a scam or against the rules, but my perception is that asset shop's purpose is to help game devs control the costs of their games will compensating the content creators in a fair manner, using assets to drive revenue via add-on sales that add little to the game, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

Unfortunately the days when monthly subscriptions were the norm are long gone. And the F2P model is showing it's weaknesses which stems from the very low conversion rate of free players to paying ones. It's simply not possible to have the huge subscriber base necessary to support each of the MMOs using the F2P model. That bubble will burst no matter how game magazines and reviewers like F2P.

I used to play Runequest which had the optional monthly fee to get ingame benefits. ESO has adopted that model and added an online store to further strengthen the revenue stream. They were able to do this because they had a large playerbase - as did Runequest when they shifted from mandatory to optional monthly subscriptions. Btw, ESO gameplay had to go through a major transformation to keep their players happy so that the model would work.

SOTA will have to go through it's own evolution. I suspect that Episode 2 will be very different from 1.

 

MMO's cannot fund themselves with $40 b2p, that is a given despite how much you hate a cash shop on principle. It is not a profit center on it's own, they have never said the proceeds are only for asset creators doing decorations. They have never said the main game will be Portalarium assets only. In fact they have said the opposite that the store is for fund raising to continue development of the game, and they have said back at the kickstarter they will use Unity because of the asset store. So Portalarium is not the one that created the perception of what the store is, that is you putting the bad taste in your mouth, not them. They have always been very clear about the purpose of the decorations store and the use of Unity assets, raising money for minimal staff.

You can do your own accounting here, the average backer is into the game for $11m from 62k backers or about $15/mo for twelve months basically a typical years subscription. Of course the median player is in for much much less than the average because that number is tilted by all those POT owners that are in deep for $$K.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=35155.

The fact is it is the cash shop raising money for the game, having replaced the previous kickstarter and land rush, even the telethons are using the cash shop as their vehicle. So limiting Portlarium to only using the cash shop to fund only asset creators using seperated accounting does not result in a game at all, because they would need to have half a million players before the steam sales even begin to fund this game. That is possible on STEAM for survival FPS games, but highly unlikely for a niche old school RPG.

 

I think the key for ESO is it is optional subscription (with a huge otherwise unobtainable benefit with Bag of Crafting replacing the huge inefficiency of using mule accounts to be a master crafter because your bank is too small) combined with the cash shop. What they found is that retention is up with cash shops because people do not rage quit and never come back like happens with expired subs, instead they come back every quarter to check out the new DLC and usually end up spending money on the store to keep up with those who have kept on grinding. And they do not need to worry as much about f2p conversion because they charge AAA b2p pricing, which includes high price collectable b2p, so even if you do not use the store they already got your money worth at least four months of sub. Now that the game can finally claim to be an Elder Scrolls game featurewise, the model does seem to be working.

 

That is all true, however, the number of people who instantly recoil from a cash shop like a vampire with a crucifix, I would argue, is small compared to the number of people who have issues with the cash shop in other ways.

So, again, what you're saying is all true... but I don't think its actually a counterpoint to what the majority of people in this thread (and beyond), who have an issue with the cash shop in general, are actually concerned about.

 

And that is not at all a concern about freebie artist being clueless and not charging $1k for the horse work as they claim, it is just the dead horse they want to poke because they are afraid if they said they hate the cash shop because the stuff makes the game ugly with all the yard sale look, and more focus is put on the cash shop than creating new mobs, whilst the game is advertised using naked dancers with fairy wings blowing bubble pipes, that it has been years of incomplete inconsequential story; that they would get moderated. I know because I too have been critical about such things and suffered for it; but I am not one that will blindly critique nor defend Portalarium as a given, but instead judge each issue on it's own merits.

Attacking Portalarium because they do not operate the store as a standalone profit center to fund only cosmetic asset creation is not going to get them anywhere in the argument, because Portalarium never claimed to be doing that so you cannot have 'caught' them putting infinite markup on things. They have always claimed to be using the store to fund the game with cosmetic items, thus the markup is irrelevant to the conversation because it is not just funding the asset itself. It is the 'free' doodad that you get saying thank you for funding the entire game. It is much better than the packaged kickstarter/benefactor deals where I got a bunch of doodads I had no interest in, with the store you can pick what doodads you want in return for funding the game. This is no different than the purse you get for spending the big bucks at Macy's next department store sale, or the $200 CD you bought with your classical radio donation. You are not buying a dead horse, you are funding a game.

 

I want my pixels to have 'through the roof' experiential value, but zero resale value. That's what makes a game good and fair.

 

Either you aren't reading or aren't understanding the concept of a profit center, it is about the independence of the operation, not the destination of the funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_center. If Port pulls this off, they'd be the first to do so, no other MMO has succeed with this funding scheme, though more than a few corpses are on Steam Early Access if you look hard enough.

 

I know very well what a profit center is I have worked in them as well as run my own biz that way, it is exactly as the wiki says.

"A profit center is a section of a company treated as a separate business. Thus profits or losses for a profit center are calculated separately"

What that means is you do not run a section of the company at a loss just because you are making money in another section. That does not mean all companies work that way, look at any cellphone company or Amazon who makes no money on their hardware biz, they take a loss because that biz feeds their service biz which are very profitable.

Portalarium never said they are treating the store as a seperate business, and thus are not required to calculate store profits after expenses of paying for asset creation. They are not required to have a seperate funding model for the game itself to make it profitable on its own merits, but I am sure they would be happy to give you nothing but gameplay in return for a subscription, outside of WOW subscriptions have pretty much died as an MMO funding model so they don't do it because they don't think it would work. But if you want to reduce their reliance on the store then get enough supporters for subscriptions to make the game itself profitable, they would be foolish not to do it.

So you cannot take them to task for excessive margins in a profit center that does not exist, nor do you have the right to demand they organize that way - only the company owners/board can do that. And donation of money does not give you that seat that can do that.

The company is not divided that way, the store is organized so that people that want to donate funds to the game for nothing more than a digital doodad, can and now they do it without even a fancy title or rent free house. They could have just as well opened a Patreon and offered no doodads, just promises of stretch goals; but I suspect people would prefer to get something more tangible than a promise for their donations.

They have raised $11M using the funding scheme of decorative intangible items that have no actual gameplay value, and that number has still been going up despite the titles and tax free deeds no longer being offered. Seems to be working for them so far in terms of raising money, because most of the questions asked in the videos seem to be what are the new decorations that will be sold. The real question is can a MMO be developed for such a small amount since most MMO budgets are $$$M. But $11M could have gone very far for a solo/multiplayer cooperative/competitive parties RPG....somebody in the office decided the game was better off as an MMO.

 

I think we've left this conversation go on long enough, it's starting to widen in talking points a bit too much. We've had three developers respond with the reasons on this matter. Please go back through the pages to review them, and if anyone has any further questions on how we're keeping the game moving forward, please let us know!

DarkStarr:
I completely understand that without complete information this could be frustrating.

Assets like these are often only free if you do not resell them like we are. Even if it was free it doesn't just magically appear in the game without any effort. It takes actual development time to get it working in the game properly. Many hours in fact. Sometimes the textures have to be adjusted. Often we have to make levels of detail versions. We have to make simple colliders. We have to set all the proper decoration and permission flags. We then have to spend time adding it to offers and the add on store. That costs money. It is not free.

Berek:
I'm going to quote Starr's previous post, in case it gets lost here as the discussion moves along. Please know that comparing the cost of an item on an addon store is vastly a different camp of consideration than that cost of what Starr outlined. The cost of integration and support, combined with the fact that it's a piece of enjoyment for those who purchase it (and thus those who help to keep the game on its feet) as opposed to those who just see the $ label, should not be viewed upon as a negative. I ask that everyone please take the whole picture into account before judging how we go about making this game happen at all.

Chris:
Just to be clear, when we use store bought art it is so our artists can spend their time on other custom art for the game. Also, we are very public with our numbers and it should be clear that we are not raking in big pots of money. This isn’t some exploitive scam to try and milk money out of players by using free store art.

We have to choose what art we create in-house and what art we purchase. Same goes for Audio and for scripting to a much lesser extent. But buying stuff doesn’t mean we aren’t making stuff, it means we’re making the important stuff that can’t be bought. Look at the new scene K’rul for example. 99% of the models in that scene were made in-house.

If it helps, imagine you were paying someone to build you a house. Would you go out on the worksite and be frustrated that the builder didn’t make his own tools? Would you go up to a guy framing out a wall with 2x4’s and suggest he was ripping you off because he didn’t cut the tree down and make the boards himself?

Bottom line is, we’re making the best game we can for the least money possible, we are trying not to sell power, and when we add something to the game we don’t factor in how much time it took us to make OR how much we paid for it. If you want us to then any items made in-house would cost 100 times as much as those we buy and then you would be posting about why item X cost $$$$$$ when item Y cost $.​