Artefact Packages/Novice Cost Of Entry

Leviticus

I am okay with making it a lot easier for everyone not harder. People don't realize that all this time and money they spent into this game could be for nothing if it closes down. I am not okay with losing out on all my money I put into this game.The fact that no admin has responded to this forum is disheartening. Shame.

Devran

It is much easier now to level and to gain wealth (in whatever form, gold, lessons, credits, talismans, artifacts) than it was years ago. This is a simple fact. Pyori, you're smoking a whole batch of drugs.

However, things still need to change. I agree with Cooper. Level 80 with $20 on No Brainer Lessons and perhaps IRE Elite for a month to get Tri trans + Focus. That's enough to get into PvP. 

Any more than that though and it absolutely should require effort and work to obtain. You shouldn't be able to instantly jump into the top tier - being able to would simply devalue everything this game has as well as who plays it. 

Do I think you should have to work as hard as we did in the past? No.
Should the game change to accommodate a more modern vision to compete with other games on the market? Yes, if it doesn't lose its soul.
Should people compare this to Fortnight and expect that kind of changes? God no. If you want Fortnight, go play it. 

Mathilda

        

Sobriquet

I still dont understand why people think it should be "effort" and "work" just to be able to participate. No one is expecting anybody to jump into top tier quickly, that's just ridiculous, but we should be offering Class skills now out of the box in order to keep newbies interested. 

Effort should be put into gaining honours lines, quests, winning elections and holding office, exploring areas etc. Not the basics just to be able to play. 

Devran

Sobriquet said:

I still dont understand why people think it should be "effort" and "work" just to be able to participate. No one is expecting anybody to jump into top tier quickly, that's just ridiculous, but we should be offering Class skills now out of the box in order to keep newbies interested. 

Effort should be put into gaining honours lines, quests, winning elections and holding office, exploring areas etc. Not the basics just to be able to play. 

Level 80, with less than 50 investment is out of the box. It's fair, and it's still much better than it is now and worlds better than it was when we first started.

Trying to say you don't have the basics already, let alone with what I'm advocating, is just foolish.

Ashmond

I don't think it should cost anything to get tri-trans + survival and it should be gated around level like every other game I have ever played in my entire life, not gated around credits. (Skills wise)

This thread has never ever been about catching up with top, middle or even low tier. It's about making the entry easier for _TRUE_ newbies, without them running for the hills when you explain to them the costs required.

Going to leave out artifacts here, even L1s, as that is a different beast.

Do you not all want new players? Why do we have the mentallity that newbies must pay money or spend 99% of their time bashing to Dragon and more just to get class skills and survival? They'll think screw this paywall and play another game.

Shame there has been no official feedback from administration on this.

@Tecton , @Makarios , @Nicola , @Sarapis

Edited: Spelling

Kiet

It takes more work to be a top tier fortnite player than a top tier achaea pvper (if only because of the field of competition) so that shows how out of touch you are lol.

There's nothing being devalued. Of course, to some extent, people enjoy that Achaea lets you keep investing time/money into your character forever and ever. That's fine, let people keep doing that. But dude with tri-trans isn't a threat to your 50k escrow ass's net worth.

Proficy

Sobriquet said:

I still dont understand why people think it should be "effort" and "work" just to be able to participate. No one is expecting anybody to jump into top tier quickly, that's just ridiculous, but we should be offering Class skills now out of the box in order to keep newbies interested. 

Effort should be put into gaining honours lines, quests, winning elections and holding office, exploring areas etc. Not the basics just to be able to play. 

You dont buy any game.... ever... turn it on and expect to be good....

Effort is playing the game, learning the mechanics and knowing when, how, what to do and when to do it.

In this case effort is learning to bash, learning to quest, learning to be good at a trade... learning to do EVERYTHING this great admin team has put together and in play for us.

So yes, an expectation  to put in -effort- should always be there instead of making a char spending 10 hours bashing, or in most of your cases ...following.... someone else bashing and then being able to be on an equal playing field.

Any and everyone can play achaea, there is soooooooo much to do now adays to not be able too, but to compete on the battlefield which everyone is talking about, yes... effort, and lots of it needs and should be put in.

Devran

Kiet said:

But dude with tri-trans isn't a threat to your 50k escrow ass's net worth.

Nobody said they would be or had to be. But there are opinions voiced in this thread seem very similar to "I deserve this for free because I want it." That's fine to a certain extent, but it's not fine with everything and there are a lot of things in this game that have required effort and more importantly time to gain and should continue to do so.

Having said that, while I am in favor of 80 and less than 50 bucks invested for tri trans + focus, I would not complain if they put it in for just 80. The end result would be better than not putting it in at all, but I do feel that going beyond that is wrong.

And @Mathilda I think your graph is way off.

Atalkez

I don’t, please enlighten the rest of us. It may be ‘easier’ to generate gold, but it takes substantially more time to generate than it used to. Bashing is slower and has a gold cap to ceiling your generation there. Mining is very difficult to get into, let alone make a profit. Fishing requires a large investment or else you’re caching 100 gold at a time.

I don’t agree with things being given for free just because, and I do agree that some effort has to be required. However, that effort should come at later stages once they find things that draw them to compete. It shouldn’t be the first thing they have to figure out, because their skills are tied to their ability to generate gold/credits

Mathilda

fixed for accuracy, sorry @Devran ;

Kiet

Devran said:

Kiet said:

But dude with tri-trans isn't a threat to your 50k escrow ass's net worth.

Nobody said they would be or had to be. But there are opinions voiced in this thread seem very similar to "I deserve this for free because I want it." That's fine to a certain extent, but it's not fine with everything and there are a lot of things in this game that have required effort and more importantly time to gain and should continue to do so.

Having said that, while I am in favor of 80 and less than 50 bucks invested for tri trans + focus, I would not complain if they put it in for just 80. The end result would be better than not putting it in at all, but I do feel that going beyond that is wrong.

And @Mathilda I think your graph is way off.

You're arguing against a strawman opponent, since most of the people advocating for 3-5 trans for free (level 80) are much more accomplished in game than you ever will be and are worth thousands of credits in escrow. The people that have nothing generally already quit the game because it's an absurd proposition to start out in rather than argue in this thread.

Let's put it this way. 5-trans, the absolute maximum anyone's suggesting, is a little under 1500 credits worth. By comparison, Seragorn/Proficy/Farrah walk around with something like 50-100k+  credits worth on them. Are you telling me there's 'no effort' to earn an extra fucking 40+k credits? lol.

This is without even counting much of the effort, if you want to compete in pvp etc., is from the burden of knowledge.

Sena

Leviticus said:

The fact that no admin has responded to this forum is disheartening. Shame.

Ashmond said:

Shame there has been no official feedback from administration on this.

They've said before that it's not something they'll really discuss publicly, not getting a response is expected. They've made it pretty obvious that every aspect of the newbie experience is a top priority and they pay close attention to any difficulties newbies have, though, and they definitely pay attention to the thread even if they don't join the discussion.

There's really nothing new being said here though. The discussion has barely changed since 4-5 years ago, the biggest difference is that CFS is more expensive.

Erwin

It's so obvious no one here ever played a competitive game. Wanna talk competitive and effort?

Buy a copy of Overwatch. You have literally everything unlocked. Does this "undermine the effort grandmaster players went through to get there"? The answer is no, turns out it takes skill to play any game competitively.

League of Legends. Completely free. You can pay to unlock different characters, sure, but even that has a solid rotation. And guess what? Even THEY had to make changes to make purchasing characters more accessible so that new players had a better time because, and this is the important part, Attracting and Keeping New Players Interested Is An Important Part of Maintaining a Game's Health.

So let me put it clearly for anyone who's never reached a professional level on a game of any nature before: Access to resources does not undermine skill. Grinding for resources can be a fun part of a game (I disagree but whatever) but it will never replace skill. Combat is ALREADY inaccessible as all hell and most people don't even want to start wrapping their heads around it.

Stop gatekeeping because you're salty you were here first and you're afraid of change. Times change. People have stressful lives trying to survive. If they want to spend some of their extra money in this game they shouldn't have to be working a second job in-game on top of it to get anywhere.

Laedha

It seems like a good idea in theory and I'm not on board with making things hard just to make people suffer or to prevent new people from competing with the people who have dropped thousands into the game. My problem is that I think it could backfire. It MIGHT help retention and player recruiting to make it easier and cheaper to get basic skills transed and maybe even some discounted arties. But..... it might not. Then they would just be out revenue. MUDs aren't that popular and most people aren't going to play them period; they don't want to have to learn hundreds of text commands to be able to play, let alone be told that it's hard to be really good if you don't code at all. Then if they get past that, they realize that most goals in the game past level 80 are going to take real life months or years and a lot of people get bored when their characters hit 80 or dragon and they get HR5 because it feels like there are fewer short-term achievable goals. I think those are all bigger barriers to player attraction than the cost. For people who get past those and are still hooked, some are going to be deterred by the $$, but it's also totally possible to just buy the no-brainer packages and maybe enough for a basic artie or two and achieve nearly everything you want in the game except top-tier combat. 

I'm just not sure it's a good financial decision for IRE to substantially reduce the cost for newbies with the goal of player retention when there are so many other reasons we have bad player retention. The game already operates at a pretty bare-bones level with few staff, so anything that could reduce credit purchases would be really risky for them and for us. 

[Deleted User]

Obligatory, "You don't need to know how to code at all beyond simple aliases, in order to be 'really good' at fighting."

Mexis

It sucks to have such a huge cost to play the game.

It is a great game, just sucks to feel compelled to spend money. I just came back to the game and spent money and have serious regret about it... And now I feel invested and not even 100% sure I made the right choice with everything but now if I change class after embrace I lose more, so I'm stuck.

Sometimes I am thinking, as I'm mindlessly bashing, why not just fire up wow or buy gaming console.

I don't know. Maybe I need to just chat with more people in game, but I'm not the most outgoing dude irl.

Minifie

Mexis said:

It sucks to have such a huge cost to play the game.

It is a great game, just sucks to feel compelled to spend money. I just came back to the game and spent money and have serious regret about it... And now I feel invested and not even 100% sure I made the right choice with everything but now if I change class after embrace I lose more, so I'm stuck.

Sometimes I am thinking, as I'm mindlessly bashing, why not just fire up wow or buy gaming console.

I don't know. Maybe I need to just chat with more people in game, but I'm not the most outgoing dude irl.

Annoy me on discord if you want, I did pay for half my current cr value but you can slowly build a pot. Am Zappyboi#0007