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Commission Free Vendor is most aggresive P2W ever seen; game is RMT and even that is P2W!
blorpykins
Member RarePosts: 466
The RMT in this game is out of control and Commission Free Vendors have
made the economy unplayable for anyone not willing to spend 500$ or more
to buy a bundle that comes with one of these P2W vendors. The market
is controlled by whales that have invested in these Commission Free
Vendors, some whales having six or more of these vendors in game and the CF Vendor allows its owner to stock, restock, change prices, change prices again, and again and again
through the day - every day with no fees incurred and no risk of losing
their inventory.
A regular player is forced to list on a Public Vendor and they have to pay a punishing listing fee calculated and based on their asking sell price - and then if the item doesn't sell in 7 days it's consumed by the NPC market - which is total shit, btw... in most cases the money you get back from the NPC market doesn't even reimburse you for the listing fee so you basically just lost your item(s).
Everything is allowed to be traded for real currency in this game, and gold is selling for around 20$ per 100k right now. Whales can make their money back on a 500$ pledge in a matter of weeks (sometimes days) on the savings of not having to pay listing fees. Regular players are carrying the entire burden of the economic gold sink mechanic.
A few weeks ago Portalarium opened up their QA server to everyone because people were getting tired of all the insider trading going on in the private Dev+ section of the forums. It's not a fricken coincidence that to be in Dev+ you have to buy a 500$ pledge first.
Commission Free Vendors need to be removed from the game so the economy can heal.
-----------------
Official Portalarium policy on Real Money Trading states:
A regular player is forced to list on a Public Vendor and they have to pay a punishing listing fee calculated and based on their asking sell price - and then if the item doesn't sell in 7 days it's consumed by the NPC market - which is total shit, btw... in most cases the money you get back from the NPC market doesn't even reimburse you for the listing fee so you basically just lost your item(s).
Everything is allowed to be traded for real currency in this game, and gold is selling for around 20$ per 100k right now. Whales can make their money back on a 500$ pledge in a matter of weeks (sometimes days) on the savings of not having to pay listing fees. Regular players are carrying the entire burden of the economic gold sink mechanic.
A few weeks ago Portalarium opened up their QA server to everyone because people were getting tired of all the insider trading going on in the private Dev+ section of the forums. It's not a fricken coincidence that to be in Dev+ you have to buy a 500$ pledge first.
Commission Free Vendors need to be removed from the game so the economy can heal.
-----------------
Official Portalarium policy on Real Money Trading states:
- All Virtual Items Allowed: Sales for Real Currency can include any virtual goods including Add On Store items, Pledge Rewards, and virtual currency (gold).
Comments
Game is getting more and more absurd.
There are many things that I enjoyed in the game. I found a big guild full of nice helpful people. I liked the skill system. I thought the combat mechanics were good. It did feel like an alpha state. It had some rough spots that needed polish and finishing. Overall I actually liked the game. I did find that those who invested cash were much better off than I was. It does feel PTW when you are in the game.
$500 for a Commission Free Vendor. Yea, that gives the power to just a few.
I do feel like I got my $20 of playing time in. I have no regrets, but the game could be so much more. I like to assume they are pushing the cash shop just to pay the bills. I do hope it isn't just a cash grab. I don't mind cash shops but I would like a finished game before I will use one.
It has potential. I hope they don't kill it before it can sprout.
Lord British explains the value of having a Vendor in this video... he makes it a point to explain that the vendor is essentially your own personal NPC and it's available in every instance and in every online mode (single, friends, and multi) regardless of your online status.
The P2W for this item in game is legendary.
May 2013, around minute 45
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
1.) This game looks like watered down graphics.
2.) The game developers discount high value packs and allow people to resell instead of offering people a discount on higher than $100 packages I hear.
The only problem I have with RMT is people who did Credit Card fraud in Albion for example, or other games of illegally botting and hacking of any kind assuming everything is fair and people choose to use Real Money I have absolutely no problem with it in whatever game.
Many players cant afford buying a vendor for 500$. Just one example.
The amount of real life money should never be the decider wether you become successful in a game.
How anyone can see the real life fortune as the decider is laughable at best.
Nope. And you lose the fee for auctioning it too.
Long answer:
The original idea it was designed to support was an interesting one; every item in game would be player made, and thus have a history. Thus mobs would be seeded with player crafted items, not generated. The mob crap would come from the vendor crap you sold to NPCs whilst levelling crafting etc. And the idea of Auction NPCs taking things was to get the rarer quality items for the mob loot tables.
Would it have worked? Probably not, certainly not in Single Player Offline which has no one else to seed the loot tables for you. But it was a fun concept...
However like everything else, terrible design choices, and pure RMT focused greed absolutely wrecked the idea; Firstly by making extra characters something you have to buy. Of course they did. You see, you get ONE character on a Shroud account. But to make that work, they have to allow everyone to be both a crafter and a combat character. You can build both to maximum on the same character.
If everyone can craft to the max, who needs crafters? Only the people who can't be bothered to grind... so they made it incredibly grindy, just like everything else.
And then they also promised the permanent, free vendors to high end backers, and once those were in game, the real life rich could simply opt out of ever losing an item. Of course they also now have a permanent and massive advantage over anyone trying to trade publicly via the Auction Houses, because they never pay for auctions, they never have to end, and they never lose items. And they almost certainly sit in the most travelled locations because they got first pick of home locations too, so their vendors are in excellent places.
You could equalise that; but now the people who paid literally thousands of dollars thinking they'd get that advantage over other crafters are outraged. And Portalarium listens to those backers above anyone else...
So you end up with a game where the auction house takes the items off anyone not real life rich enough, for absolutely no reason, whilst they have no way to compete because the market that does exist is so broken.
Shroud in a nutshell, basically.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What does that even mean Aron?
Right...You do know that SotA players are involved in the game on a voluntary basis, right?
Being emotionally invested in this project has brought in some major whales, and some of them have succumb to emotional manipulation and the sunk-cost fallacy.
Kickstarter was this:
Shroud of the Avatar is the “spiritual successor” to Richard’s previous work in the FRP genre. Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”.
And then it was all about the wolves in sheeps clothing and promises was made by someone that left so we're not doing it. Boo-hoo we're a small dev team. Censor censor ban ban censor lock ban. That's a great idea but we're such a small dev team and without you this will never work. We love you!
And after four straight years of receiving charity handouts to the tune $20M, they've upped their telethon schedule from quarterly to monthly and every weekend its a 20% off flash sale. And even though RMT reigns supreme no one plays the game. Not all the whales are here to flip digital items for cahs via RMT either... some of those whales that gave hand over fist gave Richard Garriott their life savings and retirement portfolios because he promised them exactly what they wanted to hear and now they don't have any choice but to abandon their hope and their money or keep giving money and keep the hope alive until it all turns out as promised.
Old people get scammed all the time, and they're always voluntarily just giving their money to people who promise them exactly what they want to hear. Nothing new to see here folks.
Its a shitty game and horrible buisiness model but no, its not a scam, not even close.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I would have thought it was obvious.
You walk down the street, you see someone being assaulted; do you intervene, or walk away?
But then we get to the claim that it's not assault if someone consents to it.
Except that doesn't absolve you from making sure you know whether all parties involved are treating it as something respectful. Most people treat it as an excuse to be lazy, to let others just make a declaration that "It's ok" and just walk away. But that's how you get to normalising abuse.
Think of your friends who have been in abusive relationships; where you a better friend for telling them what they wanted to hear... or supporting their choice but trying to explain it was a bad one?
In the long run, always the latter, they appreciated you more for telling them the hard truths. Because sooner or later the hard truth always comes out.
So here's another example, and this has come up in real life for me; BDSM play etc. Big debate on the Informed Consent forums; if you think a public scene is going wrong, should you intervene? Most people said no, because their kinks, their assumption that they can do what ever they like being such powerful Dom/mes mattered most. My answer, even though the community hated it, was Yes. You have no right to force everyone else to consent to being mindless automatons, and certainly not potential accomplices in public rape. If I think your partner is starting to become genuinely upset, and you want me to stand there and watch, you damn well better accept my right to check it's still consensual.
So we get to Portalarium.
One of the main arguments used to defend the game is "It's crowd funded!" And I took that responsibility too; I personally helped fund it at Kickstarter, and thanks to helping test it on Steam, am locked into a basic pledge so I can't fully withdraw my financial support now, even though I wish I could.
However morally, logically, in every other way, I am still responsible to my fellow human being. If I KNOW that Portalarium are abusive, in the way they financially squeeze people, in the poor way they treat their backers especially if they become critical, if I know the product is actually crap and there's a concerted, open effort to actively deceive people by manipulating the reviews and "holding reviewers responsible"... should I just walk away?
It would be easier for me. So much easier just to take the word of people saying "I'm crying, and I sold my phone and car for this, but I still believe in it!" and just ignore that.
Or I can do the RIGHT thing all the same.
Ultima IV is such a historic piece of software because it's whole premise was teaching you how to lead a good life despite the hardships of it. And Richard Garriott did that deliberately, often saying that a letter he received from a mother about his prior work (and killing children in it) encouraged him to realise he could do so much more with the genre...
That Richard Garriott no longer seems to exist. By being silent, we consent to who he is, and how he treats his fans now.
But I still have the conscience the better RG, the true spirit of Ultima inspired. I don't consent. So I won't be silent.
It's a MLM/Ponzi scheme model. Legal, but utterly unethical.
They're deliberately running a system that only survives based upon the assumption that the online items you buy now can be sold for profit later, which in turn depends upon suckering new players in without telling them the bubble is likely to burst once they're in.
Markee Dragon, the sole Trusted Trader and a personal friend of Chris Spears, is given a discount on all Store prices to ensure he can make a profit. No one else gets that discount, they have to take the full market risk.
However the amount of people prepared to pay $50 to $Thousands of dollars to get the property to place their virtual items is minuscule, especially in a bad game like Shroud. The only way RMTs are able to get enough users in to generate the market churn required to run any sort of business in Shroud is to outright lie to them constantly about it; the big one being "Everything can be gotten via in game gold!"... yes, if an RMT chooses to accept gold as payment, it might be. But it's not purchasable on an NPC.
But hook them first, and then hope to squeeze them dry later on Sunk Cost Fallacy.
However for anyone else to keep up with the inflating market, they in turn need to be able to sell to people coming in behind them; but how can they, when only Markee Dragon can ask for near Store prices and get a guaranteed profit? Everyone else is trying to scrabble for the items whose market price has sunk below initial cost and they can somehow re-inflate again. And how are you going to recruit more players when Shroud is probably already at or near it's maximum audience?
The ONLY way to keep up is to burn your own real life financial resources until you yourself burn out. And when the game finally collapses, someone is going to be stuck with a lot of disappearing "stock", or worse, a lot of items they put years of effort, time, and real love and money into getting ... and won't have the opportunity to even enjoy it any more.
Portalarium knows this. Portalarium doesn't care. We wanted a "Buy to Own" game. They even advertised the Kickstarter claiming it would be. Instead, they deliberately gave us a greed driven Ultimate Collecter 2.0.
Some call that a scam. Maybe it doesn't fit the legal definition, but it certainly fits the same morally repugnant feeling as an outright scam.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
While you compared this to serious real life issues which would be worthy causes worth fighting for this one isn't, just a mediocre game with a monetization model more onerous than most.
It's OK to stand down from the crusade, no animals were hurt in the making of this game.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
There was NEVER any intention of creating a great game to be played by many,it was always a money grab,a greedy one at that.No need to aim for a large audience,there seems to be enough careless spenders in gaming to fund even an average game full of rmt...p2w mechanics.
Some should not turn this into an ideal about the onlookers,the finger should ALWAYS be pointed at Lord British for such a lame greedy design that is more about rmt than gaming.Nobody is going to equate the value of gaming to real important life issues but the analogy is the same,if something or an idea is really bad it should be known by all,the perpetrator should be in the news as a BAD developer and a BAD business.
This is 100% a form of exploitation,there are people in this world who cannot think properly for themselves,that is why we have FORCED seat belt laws,people won't wear them even though it is obvious why you should.Servants will serve liquor to minors,obviously common sense says that is retarded but guess what,GREEDY people would do it if not for laws.Point being ,many people can NOT think for themselves or wit ha good mindset.
This point should be obvious,a person looking to exploit others for financial gain is a total lame ass and word should be spread around.
The problem with law is it is moving way too slowly on gaming,exploitation laws are steadfast when concerns minors,steadfast on employment issues but gaming,will take several more years and then a lot of this nonsense will stop.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Have you actually taken the time to read any of the information you've seen linked here? Because you show no awareness of any of the content that the "Heretics" are talking about.
No animals were harmed? What about people?
imagine... A Lord British game without the superimposed publisher... the possibilities are ENDLESS.
But in all honesty... I have paid over a thousand bucks to be laughed at and ignored in trying to simply open doors (concepts), and know if in perhaps 2-3...5 years we MIGHT think about it ?
....
ok I'm outta here before I start crying again...
Did you actually take the time to read my first mega-post detailing how Portalarium's Steam moderation team were actively working to protect scammers and a team of organised abusers as long as they were defending the game? I don't think you did. Go and actually do so.
Go and find the post I link to where Nzguzzi on Steam first comments that he's distraught because he's living hand to mouth, and feels he'll never have property.
Watch him emotionally upswing again when the claims he's found money from somewhere for the Viking Bundle. Watch how he abuses and insults me, along with the RMT organised crowd, without being censored, whilst my responses get pulled.
Click the link where, a few months later, reality kicks in and he emotionally crashes, and rages at the dev team for luring him to financial ruin. Watch as only then, when he swaps his review to negative, does he get banned for being toxic.
No animals were hurt?
Really?
What about the other user in that megapost, Zdub? Who admits to scamming others for real money in game? The one who claims he got a permanent game ban, which was turned temporary when the reminded the Devs he'd spent more than a grand on Shroud?
Were his victims not hurt with the scam? Were future victims not thrown to the wolves by letting him back because he waved more direct funding around?
It could of course all have been lies; I was happy to just let him hang himself on his own words too... but are the industry and all it's users not hurt when Zdub declared he thought scamming people, or "economic PvP" as it's often slyly referred too, was the whole point of the game? That this is what Portalarium, through their obvious bias for constant gouging for cash and Whale funding was apparently advertising to scammers like him?
Lies or not, Portalarium chooses to protect people like the above too against backers with morals but no money for them. Portalarium have CHOSEN this toxic user base.
But no animals are hurt by doing so?
Here's the thing. I said the part about walking away quite deliberately. That's what you literally did; Out of sight, out of mind. If you don't want to think about it, you don't feel it exists. And you are using the classic self defence mechanism of "Picking your Battles" whilst redefining anything you don't pick as "Not A Battle".
But it IS.
It's still harmful to other people.
And as I explain again and again to people like the spectacularly dishonest MrAdventur3, I'm also fighting the larger battles AS WELL.
I work in care. I run petitions and protest and volunteer. I'll probably be at the protest to Trump's state visit to the UK. When I'm online, in between auto-docking in Elite, or turns in Blood Bowl, or any other moment, I'm reading and writing and linking and...
I crowd sourced Shroud of the Avatar because I wanted the kind of moral, deep, intelligent, moving games Origin Systems gave us when we were young. Now it's turned even the light hearted hobbies into Objectivist greed driven Cultist bullshit, damn right I'm going to fight back against it in my spare time too.
And so should you.