Iron Elite Membership - Can we have higher "enterprise" level plans?

Dochitha

Current one:

$24.99/month Iron Elite Membership - $24.99
Member Benefits:

• Earn 5 Lessons per Day per Character when you login. This will benefit any character registered to the same email address.

• Your account will receive 100 Bound Credits per month for distribution across any characters registered to the same email address.

• 5 Additional Bound Credits for every month you remain on the membership. This cumulative bonus will top out at an additional 50 credits per month.

• Receive a 10% Bonus on ALL Credit Purchases for any character registered to the same email. This bonus will stack with any other credit promotions we are running.

• Earn a 5% cumulative XP Bonus every month. This bonus will top out after five months for a 25%. This bonus will stack with any additional experience gains.

I don't mind paying more really, we can have bigger plans that gives 10 lessons per day per character, 200 bound credits per month, 15% all credit purchses etc, and $49.99 per month.

Heck do one for:

• $49.99/mo
• $99.99/mo
• $129.99/mo
• $169.99/mo
• $199.99/mo

We can really have more stuffs in there for the bigger plans, like a special mail containing 1000 of all herbs/minerals/vials, a few daggers of reincarnation or some cool one-time use artefacts/pack of inscribed tarot cards (anything class related) etc that resets after every month...or more.

The idea is...there is a bulk of us wanting to enjoy/consume the game but do not enjoy preparing resources or just lack of time to prepare the resources. We want to just BUY them and then bash/combat. Can you do that for us?

Business point of view, I think this is a great opportunity to upsell the current Elites. I'd go for more bound credits a month!

Tael

Dochitha said:

The idea is...there is a bulk of us wanting to enjoy/consume the game but do not enjoy preparing resources or just lack of time to prepare the resources. We want to just BUY them and then bash/combat. Can you do that for us?

This already exists. The normal credit packages are exactly what you're looking for - you get unbound credits that you can sell for gold, which you can use to just buy any of the resources you need from shops/players. And the packages already come in a large variety of quantities.

Pumping a ton of herbs/minerals/vials/tarot cards/etc. into the game directly via credit packages without needing to sell the credits for gold and buy the things with gold would be disastrous for the game's economy.

Dochitha

@Tael it's stressful to buy credits in bulk. but a lot easier to put it on subscription and completely forget about it, wake up and see ooooh! Bounds!

And, membership is cheaper per credit, that's the point! -evilgrin-

Jules

The $50 one is probably doable (I am too lazy to verify whether the extra 5% in credit sales is fair to both company and customer), and you're right, it would appeal to certain customers who are somewhat aware that they probably shouldn't just BUY BUY BUY credit packages randomly, but also, for whatever reason, don't plan to wait for a 30% sale and combine that with their membership - and really, I do think the math works out best that way, certainly in terms of effort, and being a "sure bet", and of course, most of the credits will be liquid.  It's certainly better than the (also very good, respectable) deal you get with just stockpiling memberships.  

The other memberships... man, even though I've made 5000 credit purchases at times, I'd sort of freak out if I forgot about something like that.  It's very possibly too big to be an "automatic" expense.  

EDIT:  $50 membership would make a lot of sense for newer-ish players in particular.    

Katzchen

I don't know about most others, but 50 extra bound credits and 150 lessons a month isn't worth an extra $25US to me, so I'd stick to my usual iron elite until it came time to make a credit purchase, bump it up for one month, then drop it back. If it was more along the lines of the current offer again without enhancing the % given on credit purchases, I'd consider that for a monthly thing. 300cr + 10 lessons a day + 25% xp boost + 10% credit bonus.

Aktillum

More elite tiers would be great but I lol'd hard at $199.99 a month tier. Someone would probably use it though.

Katzchen

Also a huge vote against gold purchasable items - flooding the market to that extent would end up with them given away which would screw over the trade skills market.

Jules

Katzchen said:

I don't know about most others, but 50 extra bound credits and 150 lessons a month isn't worth an extra $25US to me, so I'd stick to my usual iron elite until it came time to make a credit purchase, bump it up for one month, then drop it back. If it was more along the lines of the current offer again without enhancing the % given on credit purchases, I'd consider that for a monthly thing. 300cr + 10 lessons a day + 25% xp boost + 10% credit bonus.

I do think docitha means starting at 200 (vs. 100), which does still mean that the cumulative bonus is lower as a percentage of total unless that is doubled as well (which it probably should be since it's essentially a "double" membership).  So in short I do think you are both probably suggesting the same thing.  

It's the credit bonus for additional purchases that would require a least some thought to make sure it makes sense for both customer and IRE - and 15% was probably a good starting guess (still to lazy to work it out today).  

Brissan

I just think for someone like myself that just started playing a few months ago, I don't have the resources to get all the artefacts that others have and frankly its a huge disadvantage for newbs. I do have the elite membership and saving up for a level 1 weapon but still be months or even years before I can be on par with others. But oh well it is what it is.

Katzchen

Ah, I figured from the experience boost listed that it was the max, as I can't imagine hoping for it to be upped any more than it is. There's already complaints there's too many dragons, imagine if Iron Elite were upped to 50%.

Katzchen

Exactly. Can't see it ever going up.

Skye

Wouldn't mind paying the same amount for the option of a lesser quantity of unbound credits. But don't really see them adding tiers like that.

Tael

Brissan said:

I just think for someone like myself that just started playing a few months ago, I don't have the resources to get all the artefacts that others have and frankly its a huge disadvantage for newbs. I do have the elite membership and saving up for a level 1 weapon but still be months or even years before I can be on par with others. But oh well it is what it is.

I imagine you've seen this sentiment expressed by now, but it's really not as huge a disadvantage as it seems. Being smarter than someone is almost always massively more important in PvP than having tons of artefacts. Once you reach the highest echelons where being significantly smarter ceases to be an option because all of your opponents are very smart, then maybe you have a problem.

If you took away all of Santar's artefacts and you got to have every artefact you wanted, I would be surprised if you could last more than a handful of seconds against him in a duel.

Merador

I get the point that you're making, but Thoth's fang is a massive deal for Serpent, even one as good as Santar.

Aktillum

Merador said:

I get the point that you're making, but Thoth's fang is a massive deal for Serpent, even one as good as Santar.

Thoth's is sexy yeah, but if you're a Serp on a budget you can reach about the same dstab speed with a lvl 2 and 16 dex, I think you're only losing about 0.1ms. Also if you're a Serp and you just jump into buying a Thoth's with 15 dex, you're missing out on the other benefits Dex offers to Serps. Thoth's fang is like, epeen bragging rights at this point, and not a game-changer or anything.

Min-maxing in Achaea has gotten sort of funny lately. I originally went Grook Magi like "oooh, 18 Int stormhammers, sexy!" and then I realized Horkval Mage is much tankier (dskin+hork resist) and I swear to god I only lost 90 points of damage dropping 2 Int. We live in a funny sort of fantasy world when the dumb insectoids are a much better pick for Magi class over the intellectually superior Grooks.

Talysin

Can you buy double memberships for your character? :0

Jules

Tael said:

Brissan said:

I just think for someone like myself that just started playing a few months ago, I don't have the resources to get all the artefacts that others have and frankly its a huge disadvantage for newbs. I do have the elite membership and saving up for a level 1 weapon but still be months or even years before I can be on par with others. But oh well it is what it is.

I imagine you've seen this sentiment expressed by now, but it's really not as huge a disadvantage as it seems. Being smarter than someone is almost always massively more important in PvP than having tons of artefacts. Once you reach the highest echelons where being significantly smarter ceases to be an option because all of your opponents are very smart, then maybe you have a problem.

If you took away all of Santar's artefacts and you got to have every artefact you wanted, I would be surprised if you could last more than a handful of seconds against him in a duel.

It's absolutely true, but I think most of us recognized exactly this as one of the more intractable problems.  People who have been playing for many years don't just have a lot of artifacts, they probably have almost all of them if they care about such things - in level 3 where applicable.  It just is.  

It's one of those things that would be difficult if not impossible for IRE to address, but it's still just incredibly intimidating to someone newer, even if they're fortunate to have the great gift of innate intelligence.  Still, you're right, because what is almost certainly worse really is the ~10 years of honed experience (i.e. a very particular flavor of smart person, some of them focused almost like lasers on Achaean combat) that top fighters have.  That also just is what it is.  

Some people are going to be frustrated with that no matter what, because they just have to win.  The problem is, I'd be totally willing to walk into fights like that, and I DO walk into fights like that - when it doesn't mean I have to go bash for hours afterwards.  Achaea has said they won't get rid of PK XP loss.  I don't like it, but at least consider offering people more "real world" no XP loss games/events.  And make some of those things group fights, so that people end up with a few improvements to focus on instead of being totally overwhelmed by awesomeness, and maybe even get to ask someone who knows what they're doing about it.

Santar

It's easier to be unartied, or lightly artied now than it ever was before. Arties just matter less in offense in general than they used to.

The flip side is that more people do already have artifacts now. And of course, if you're new to this game, you're not going to immediately overcome someone that is fighting at top tier level with full-gear. The game is designed for you to work towards your goal and develop over time. Not instant gratification.

I fought unartied, or mostly unartied for the vast majority of my character's career. I'm fairly well artied out now, but it wasn't always that way.

Silvarien

Artefacts are not just about combat, and they're not just about "winning." I am not sure why the emphasis on combat. A lot of them help in RP as well as PK, such as the staff of illusion. A lot of others have no direct combat implications but help with unrelated things, like Gloves of Harvesting. The portable forge I carry around is what forgers wanted forever, the ability to forge anywhere; whole auctions revolved around a forge being placed where the person wanted. The portable forge is 250 cr, not 1600 or 2000.

I would say that almost invariably the arties that help with RP or with things like harvesting and gathering are the less expensive ones. From that perspective, a higher tier of Elite would be good for people who are in it for the RP but don't expect to be fighting much.

Just my two cents.

Aktillum

I don't think I'd agree that there's this massive wall of artied veterans standing in the way of newbies getting their foot in the combat door. I see plenty of unartied, level 60 - 70ish people looking for spars. And if they're true newbies, they need to be focused on actually learning their skills and transing Survival etc, not worrying about artefacts.

Jules

"spars" have their place, but hanging around asking for spars (or just accepting them from time to time) is sooooo different from walking into a real combat situation that just happens organically.  I hardly ever used (or use) the spar system, even if I "should", but I love group combat, and I even love getting jumped and/or stalked from time to time.  It's a world of difference.  

Atalkez

Skills and experience far outweigh artifacts in terms of how well you do in combat.

Not having tumble will cost you tons and tons more deaths than not having a level 3 health regeneration ring.

I'm sure if you asked any of the top tier people to fight you without their artefacts, you'd be surprised how many people would be willing to do it. I took my band off to fight another bm that had a level 2 (or 1? ) band I won every time. Artefacts are like steroids.  Do they help? Yes. Do they turn Joe Newb into Jhui? Not a chnace.

Aktillum

Ah yeah, group combat is enormously different from 1v1 sparring people of similar might / newbieness. Still though, I don't think newbies are invited to raids / defenses with any regularity. They'd just die in 2 shots from Jhui, which might be the point you're making, but newbies have no place in group combat honestly. Other cities might feel differently but in Eleusis we only send raid/defense invites to people on ARMYWHO, and our ARMYWHO is mostly people with somewhat of a grasp on combat and what they're getting into.

Jules

Yeah, probably not so much raids, but, for example, just more CTFs for the heck of it (not necessarily even "real" CTFs just use the mechanics) would be a start, and since they use existing mechanics, they don't require more work.  I'd love some more options that would require at least some coding, but just something like that would be a start.  More PK egghunts, too.  

Klendathu

There are arena events you can use to simulate combat without risk of XP loss. And yes, I know they aren't the same as "real world" fighting, but in real world fighting, there's consequence and loss which is, as we've all been told ad nauseum, is unacceptable.

Aktillum

@Jules I fondly remember some years ago that Delos arena would host level 20 - 60 rampages with some frequency, but I've seen zero of those in a few years. I do agree that more events could be catered to the newbie crowd.

Jules

Yes, and not just newbies, but also people like me who are (I think rightfully) intimidated by the idea of venturing into "real" combat.  But, on the note of Rampages, many arena games are especially baffling to me.  In a rampage, for example, you are likely to walk into a group of people already duking it out, which for me, my reaction is "umm, should I start whaling on one of them"?  If someone jumps me while I'm picking up eggs in an egghunt, for example, the situation just feels so much more straightforward.  

Santar

I set up my system to accommodate a lack of arties a few minutes ago.

If anyone is interested in an unartied duel/spar, let me know. You can use yours, I won't use mine.

Atalkez

Santar said:

I set up my system to accommodate a lack of arties a few minutes ago.

If anyone is interested in an unartied duel/spar, let me know. You can use yours, I won't use mine.

Would be cool to see more of this. It would be fun to see how good some people really are without all the crutches.

Titonus

Everyone I've ever asked for unartied duels accepts...it's really not that uncommon of a thing.

Edit: Hell, Xenomorph use to give his artefacts to whoever he was fighting...

Aktillum

Seriously though, @Sarapis, I'd like to see a lower tier elite membership. The $25 membership is great for what you get, but a $12.99 package would also be great. It would ideally give you monthly lessons and XP bonus, instead of bound credits. Would be great for new characters on a budget who just want to trans out a few skills in a couple months or so. I realize the no-brainer package exists, thats why I said the $12.99 membership should also give an exp bonus.