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If you want a more ridiculous example : https://robertsspaceindustries.com/pledge/Combos/Wing-Commander-Digital
[ SnB PvP Guide | Link ]
Make your own lunch and bring it to work for a month. Take your savings and buy credits.
Up front a lot of the prices look scary, but Achaea is not really all that expensive. Sure, for a game, yeah. But seeing as I have literally sat over a year in front of my computer, playing this game, I am going to say it's really not that bad. It's no more than adding an extra slice of cheese on your subway sandwich every day for a month.
I like achaea, I really do. Sometimes things irritate me, but I am willing to drop plenty of money into something that I enjoy as not only a hobby, but part of my life. (seeing as how many friends I have made around the world with it.)
You never have to pay, but it sure helps. I think some work could be done on basic skills, at least for the first character/skillset. But besides that, most of my credits have gone to housing and customizations for small things that I enjoy, and other people. So like I said, if you really want to get some credits in achaea without breaking the budget, look at the other things you do that are silly first. After all, the most expensive credits you can buy are 50 cents a credit.
Did you just buy a starbucks coffee? well if you didn't you could have just bought 7 credits. Did you get extra cheese? 3 credits. double meat? 4 credits.
Bam, that's how I saw food when I was young and in high school. I saved 50 cents a day, then bought credits at the end of the month. And hell, back then they didn't even have all these crazy promotions they have now.
Well, that's my rant on spending money. I likely won't get anything this month cause I have no arties I want to buy really. But since we got on that tangent, I just felt like people could put credits into perspective.
Ftr, apologies if my first paragraph sounded harsh, I was drawing a parallel but didn't mean to sound so accusatory. I just know that Tecton and others put in a full-time schedule and probably overtime into Achaea, and deserve a just compensation in the form of a competitive salary for any other job they could be doing with their coding / administrative skills.
If IRE could meet or even increase their sales quota by significantly cutting prices across the board, I think they would have. Or maybe this promo is an experiment in that direction. I'm hesitant to agree that a 90% price slash and $20 veils would bring them an equal amount of money that they're currently making, simply because of the premium-desire ratio. Artefacts are so high because premium pricing makes something more desirable (otherwise nobody would pay $8 for a cup of coffee from Starbucks when you could just get a .75 cent coffee from the gas station).
Not to mention, the players actually dictated the price of artefacts in the first place, when Sarapis put the first artefacts ever on auction years and years ago, and players bid them up significantly higher than he ever expected. People will pay exorbitant prices to have a competitive edge, which is what the price of combat artes banks on. If you cut costs by 90%, like Tesha suggested, then everyone would have combat artes. Which would put everyone on an even playing field and do great things for the combat scene, gameplay wise.
Business wise, I don't think there are currently that many actually desirable artes that us being able to suddenly purchase 10 artefacts for $50 would mean everyone would be spending $50 to purchase 10 artefacts. Its more likely people would spend $20 to buy the few artefacts they actually needed. Not to mention the in-game credit market would become so flooded with cheap credits that nobody would ever need to purchase credits OOCly ever again. I mean imagine if credits in-game were 1k each, we could all buy 1000 credits in like 2 weeks of bashing. They would need to completely re-invent the game economics and significantly scale back gold drops, tweak herb and elixir costs, forging costs, etc etc.
I do know what you mean by the industry standard of pay-for-perks pricing. I too have played F2P MMOs where the cash shops were just little $5, $10, $20 items. However, there are also wildly popular MMOs that have even higher pricing than Achaea. Conquer Online, Flyff, Maple Story, Dragonica, the list goes on with some googling. There's a wide range of popular MMOs out there where you can drop $1,000 or more on a single item. Achaea doesn't have the worst pricing I've ever seen, in that regard.
We can only theorize what would actually happen with significant price slashes though, and hopefully this promo is an experiment in that direction.
IRE model is bizarre and its customers equally strange. Period. Including me. Yep, Tecton and Co. are great guys who deserve their paychecks, but it still doesn't change that weirdoes like us are paying many thousands of dollars for our perks, which, in most cases, even if you spread it out over time, trust me, if any normal person knew what we were spending they'd slap us. Hard. Even if you make good money.
But, what a couple of people mentioned about size of player base is almost certainly true too. To a point. If it weren't for a good portion of our tiny player bases being... well, batshit insane, all of this probably wouldn't work and we wouldn't have great games to play. That said, Achaeans really are the craziest/most willing to overspend for less returns even within IRE and there is often room for you to put your collective foot down. Also, someone start a Roth for Kyrra, or whatever it is the Aussies have. Seriously.
EDIT: also, seriously tempted by this promo next door even with real prices, because I look at real prices anyway and go "welp, fuck it, I can't stand Jobs but that new iPhone is pretty sweet" (that's a lie, I hate my iPhone).
http://www.nitrorcx.com/99b-12001-bwc-1300-kit.html <$365. For a toy boat.
When I was a teen, my dad used to rag on me for dropping $50 on Achaea with my Burger King paycheck, then he'd drop like $5,000 on a dented, rusted muscle car so he could restore it, drive it once or twice, sell it and start all over again. Okay, restoring muscle cars is pretty badass, but my point stands.
You honestly can't quantify the investment-to-return ratio if people really love their hobby. That goes without saying though. For the record I would love to see Achaea artes drop in price, I just don't like the "Achaeans are weirdos who spend too much money on text-items" argument hehe.
If you're able to get double cheese and double meat, or buy your lunch every day at fast food joints, or buy a starbucks every day, or go out to the club on fridays, or go to the movies, or nearly any other hobby, you have an expendable income. If you already have an expendable income, you should learn how to use it, or how to adjust it for other non-essential things you can buy. Assuming you have your pool of money you spend in a non-essential way, you just learn how to mix that up.
Now if I said "cancel your phone, or keep your house cold for extra credits" then i'd say you have to adjust your priorities. But if you think that cutting corners is ignoring extras on a sandwich, your priorities are already pretty out of whack.
Achaea might be impulse buying, but it's not for me. I decide a long time for an arty, and fully understand it will last me for as long as I play the game. Impulse buying is more like buying an extra life that you can lose on candy crusher, not buying a +1srt item that will last you FOREVER.
That is the difference in micro transactions. one is for an instant gratification, one is for life, or the longevity of the game. There is no shame in saving up for something that will last you for the rest of your life, if the servers stay up that long.
I just don't like it when people snip the part of my post where I complete my thought when it's relevant to their own response
Anyway, the closest thing to what we're doing is buying a "boutique" program. Sort of. We're buying user access to it. Sort of. But we ARE nuts. Sorry. I have another ridiculous hobby, but yeah, there are real items involved, that have at least some actual real world value. Also, mind-blowingly, all of the things you mentioned? WAY cheaper than Achaea by any remotely respectable credit whore standard. Period.
of thought process we want floating around such a small community that thrives off of new players?
Edit: this was for @Aepas
This perspective is just saying artifacts are too expensive to justify spending money on, regardless of how much money you have.
-Also, the iron elite monthly credits are badass for this type of gradual building.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
The mobile apps and Steam games can do it because they have access to hundreds of thousands of unique customers. I would be surprised if Achaea had 2000 unique logins (not separate characters) per month, ignoring newbies that don't stick around.
Those games rely on 50,000 people spending 20 bucks and a smaller number of heavy spenders to keep their games going, and tons spending $1.99.
I spent a load of money on credits 10 years ago, got a lot of the artefacts I wanted, but still have a list I'd like. Can't spend money any more, got more important things to spend it on, so I bash for gold, then use the gold to buy credits. This is something anyone can do, if they have the inclination. You don't have to have artefacts to get ahead, and you don't have to pay real money for artefacts.
The price of the artefacts makes them more exclusive, if they're so cheap that everyone has them, what's the point of having them any more?
Achaea is addicting for its complexity and its depth. That depth is built upon the fact that players write the history and mythos of the game. Players become deified legends in their own right, known to all but the freshest of newbies. Anything you want in the game is attainable. Anything. From Godhood to owning a sprawling mansion, to political and social dominance, to becoming a fighter who is feared by players everywhere. The time and resources that must be invested for these things is immense, and that makes the feats even more admirable and appealing. So if credit prices suddenly drop, and newbies can just drop $100 to buy like 10 artefacts, I think it'd diminish some of that feeling of attainment and prestige that being near the top in Achaea seems like it should carry.
Achaea also has one of the best, most responsive staffs I've ever heard of. They are constantly working to keep us happy, improve the game, and do what's best for IRE, which is amazing. Achaea also caters to a niche market, with a relatively small group of players, and that has to be taken into consideration when we discuss credit prices and such.
But then there's the paywall. And, no matter who you are, it is a large paywall. Go on the artefact shopping cart, add up the total of a fully artefacted, level 3 character, and you'll find a price comparable to a early-2000 used vehicle. There is no way that new character, who may have a family, a wife, or simply a crap job, is going to look at that and say to himself, "Shit, ain't no thing. I can drop that on a game. Nevermind that I could go buy a PS4, Xbox One, Wii, and a nice gaming computer, with a nice Samsung Class 60" UHD TV to play them on!" and keep playing. I know that it is certainly a turn off when I think about the cost/reward of artefacts, but I also recognize that they're not necessarily required to enjoy the game. But it's still frustrating, as that most developed feature in the game, PvP, requires them to ever truly participate in. You can PvP without artefacts, certainly, but there's no denying that at a certain point, the artied person with the same skills will likely win. Achaea seems to rely on the fact that most people, by the time they reach that level, have invested so much time that they just go ahead and fork over some money, or they have time to spend in game earning the things they really want/need, which only further refines the already small group of players.
I view new players as having a set of choices to make, if you will. As a newbie, either you have the income to toss at something, or you don't. If you do, you're in the minority, and you stay. The second group either goes away or decides to stick around for a while. This persistent group then invests as much time as they're able, and then comes to another fork in the road; they kind of need artefacts, because they feel like they're unable to fully enjoy the game. Now either they have the time to bash for what they want, or they start to determine if they can justify putting that much money into a game. They might decide to buy an artefact or two, or they might gradually go away, having invested a lot of time already, and thus taking away from some of the culture of the game, making it less marketable.
I'd hate to see a flood of credits an artefacts, due to a cheaper price, but I do think it'd help with retention of true newbies. I often wonder how sustainable Achaea's model is, as it really serves such a specific group of people, compared to other games and their price models.
500 new people try Achaea a month, where are they in 6 months? If 200 stayed and got IRE, and 100 of those got $100 in artefacts, do those numbers support a different price model? Do we know why those other 300 left?
500 new players, 200 stay on IRE, 100 buy $100 in artefacts. $30,000 in IRE over 6 months, plus the 10,000 in artefacts. $40,000 in 6 months.
500 new players, 300 on IRE, maybe 150 buy $50 in artefacts. $45,000 in 6 months, $7,500 in artefact purchases, means $52,500 in revenue.
Numbers of players are arbitrary.
A decent bump, and it seems like that's what everyone is saying should happen, but is that a practical assumption? Does it really work that way?
tl;dr I think there is a large middle ground, as someone said earlier, that is ignored. I subscribe to IRE, and have been for a while (save for like two months where I was working too much to play at all) and I'm happy to do so, but not everyone, especially newer players, is going to feel the same way, at least in my opinion. Smaller transactions would certainly serve as a gateway to newer players.
But I think we also have to ask ourselves, as players, if we really want the massive influx of new players that it could bring if the barrier to entry was reduced. Just how casual of a gamer do we want? People who participate in games with micro-transactions are impulsive, and they probably lack the perseverance that has made the Achaean player base ad its culture so unique. They could be less likely to spend months learning about in-game lore and then write manuscripts to build upon said lore, and more likely to hop in, buy artefacts, buy a system, and go around lolpking everything in sight. Is there even a steady enough stream of new players to justify a drop in pricing?
Given the time factor, I'm alright with it. Even moreso now because I know the game I'm buying into. But I truly get where people are coming from, because very few items are in what I'd consider my throwaway cash price range.
And even having spent money on several artefacts recently, it wouldn't bug me to see them drop in price, if that allowed for more cash flow into IRE's pockets which in turn allowed for me to keep playing this game longer.
I'm pretty sure that these numbers all look good to them though, because this sale is probably one of the most generous in a long time, but other than that, prices have remained largely consistent over the years. (Other than smaller credit packages being more affordable and the lesson packages...)
4. Iron Realms lays off most of its staff as it watches its revenue plummet, and goes down to 1 or 2 people trying to run 5 games. Development slows to nearly non-existent.
You'd need 10x as many people to buy credits or people to buy 10x as many credits. That's simply not going to happen. We already have big-spenders, who are essential to the free-to-play model, emailing us on a somewhat regular basis to complain there aren't enough things they want to use their credits to on. It's not as if those people are suddenly going to find a way to spend 10x as many credits, and there is a 0% chance that the difference in true newbies that stick would make up that revenue.
This is why tying item purchases to real-world prices instead of credits/RP/whatever is rarely done. So people can't easily put a value to said items. Oopsies.
Edit: Just cause the big dawg commented. For the Record, @Sarapis , I don't think that you guys should drop prices by even close to 90%. I think maybe adjusting some artefact values and tweaking credit prices could give relatively the same effect without killing your revenue in the way that a across-the-board 90% price drop would.
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
$x/mo. for bashing bundle: SoA, hunter's belt, level 1-2 sip ring, level 2 crit pendant
$x/mo. for class specific bundles for combat, etc.
For artefacts, there could be rental programs. Maybe a bonus feature of IRE. You get an artefact or two, per month, and every so often you can upgrade it to get another artefact, etc. Lower the price of artefacts and credits, but reduce the number you can buy, per month, in game. I think there is a happy medium somewhere, even if we can't readily identify it, but there are a lot of questions about which direction it would push the game that should be asked.
Not saying prices should absolutely be dropped, as I certainly don't know enough to really come to that decision. These are just my thoughts and some observations, as I'm no economist or business manager. Also, I really think this promotion is an incredible deal, and I'm interested to see how popular it really ends up being. Also, Amranu hit the renta-a-artefact thing before me apparently.
Those numbers are wildly out of touch with reality I'm afraid.