Going by the prices found
here, if I asked my parents to buy me 400 credits for Christmas, they'd ultimately spent like twelve hundred dollars. Correct me if my math is wrong, but that's really kind of ridiculous. I don't even want to think of how much the 1400 credits for an Auroran mace would cost.
Why do credits cost so much? I mean, I'm not poor or anything, but a twelve hundred dollar Christmas present is a bit steep. I'd feel bad even suggesting it.
I could understand if you tallied up employee wages, server costs and blahblahblah [Achaean employees? Is that a thing?], but I don't know anything about what it costs yearly for Achaea to exist, so I dunno. There's also a childish part of me that wants to scream and shout: it's not fair! But if I know anything, it's that life isn't fair and nothing worth having comes cheap.
On another note, I really like how the economy in the game is set up. It's realistic. And by that, I mean brutal and cutthroat. I learned Conjuration and was really excited about the idea of making reasonable gold .. until I spent 50k+ on commodities and realized that I'm going to have to tread a very, very fine line if I want to make more than I lose. Definitely like business in real life.
I've helped my mom with breeding and selling designer dog breeds [hypoallergenic crossbreeds like yorkipoos, shihpoos, pekipoos, etc.] for almost five years now and we usually sell our female puppies for $350 and our males for $300. Something like that, anyway. We've had a lot of people who come to us interested and leave after finding out the prices. They're shocked that we charge so much "just for a dog".
But what they don't know is that we've got a lot of money tied up in this business. After you tally up the price of vet bills, dog food, trips to the groomer, and so forth, you have to charge that kind of money or you won't make a profit. That's just how things are. It makes sense to me when I think of it like that.
I don't want to strip Achaea down to numbers and whatever, but behind the fun and immersion, it is a business, right? So .. why do the extra things like artefacts and credits cost so much?
Comments
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
400 credits is $140.
The more in bulk you buy, the cheaper it is per credit. If you bought 1600cr in one go for a mace, it would be $442 (1500cr) + $40 (100cr).
Results of disembowel testing | Knight limb counter | GMCP AB files
However, when I think about it, it makes sense. Achaea simply doesn't have the playerbase to support the amount of staff it seems to have working on it under a normal model. If the cost of playing this game for free is that some people get an advantage by being willing to support it, then that seems reasonable. Moreover, I've played for a couple weeks now and I've beaten people with artefacts. While I may be sad at the amount of money it would cost to try switching to Occultist, I am eminently satisfied with my ability to progress and learn in combat with just a $20 investment.
If only I'd have thought to patent it, we could run the Iron Realms games for free as the income from them would be irrelevant next to the income from the patent. Oh well. Business process patents are bullshit anyway.
You are correct though as to why we have to be pricey. Our admin+developer to staff ratio is sooo much higher than in anything mainstream like League of Legends. We have no economy of scale, basically.
For example, the 400 credit package is $140, but if you wanted 400 credits you would really get 1 month of Iron Elite ($25) and the 300 credit package ($105), giving you a total cost of $130 for 430 credits (and 150 lessons per character). Or just 4 months of Elite, giving you 430 credits and 600 lessons per character for $100 if you don't mind waiting (and 4 months would also give a very nice experience bonus if you care about that).
That's before the monthly promotions; right now, you'd get 15 giftbags and 3 humgii racing tickets with the 300 credit package, and I'm not sure what the chances are of the different giftbag prizes but you can generally estimate most promotions (that can be converted to credit value) to be at least a 15-30% bonus on average if you sell/tradein whatever you get (if you don't want to keep it). With some promotions, the bonus can be worth more than your actual credit purchase if you're lucky.
Iron Elite and the lesson package have made the costs for most things a lot more reasonable, yeah. Getting your character tri-transed at the least is pretty realistic with just 50 bucks and some time.
These days the only people who remember, most likely, besides our players, are the industry folks who were around in the early days of MMOs (late 90s, early 2000s), and Wikipedia, which is fine. 18 years ago is forever in internet terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_goods
It has the wrong date (was late '97 when we first sold virtual goods) but close enough.
(Also, should note that I'm all-but-positive that the Koreans didn't copy us. They independently came up with the model as far as me and Jake Song, who was one of the very early Korean MMO guys, can tell. We wouldn't have been on their radar.)
@Sarapis .. ? We do have some pups on the way, coincidentally ..
I'm a bona fide criminal in China!
I would've assumed the Korean MMO makers came up with it independently, too, yeah. Achaea still beat them time-wise.
China's a pain in the ass to run a game in. You can't show things like zombies or skeletons. You can't have game themes that contradict their official pro-China view of history. They have various regulations about how you can sell virtual goods in games, and so on.
Sarapis rocks the chihuahuas I'm afraid.
Witness the majesty of Chairman Mao on bath day!
d
I started playing this game as a broke college kid that couldn't afford credits, and I was able to play because other people could and did.
Now I'm in the position where I'm regularly buying credits, so I'm paying so that others can play for free.
Good model, in my opinion.
Site: https://github.com/trevize-achaea/scripts/releases
Thread: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4064/trevizes-scripts
Latest update: 9/26/2015 better character name handling in GoldTracker, separation of script and settings, addition of gold report and gold distribute aliases.
Hm, we raised and sold australian shepherds for $1k+, 300-350 for a 'designer dog breed' sounds crazy cheap to me.
Site: https://github.com/trevize-achaea/scripts/releases
Thread: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4064/trevizes-scripts
Latest update: 9/26/2015 better character name handling in GoldTracker, separation of script and settings, addition of gold report and gold distribute aliases.