Iron Elite Membership Updates!

Minifie

Jumpy said:

I see that some people have pointed this out, but the main reason we instituted this change was for people who did not want to wait to get the XP bonus. We typically had an email a week asking to move memberships to another game or something like that, which we could not do. This was really to help them out. The membership is already such a good deal that there is no way we can reduce the cost. 

don't have to reduce the cost, just more bang-for-buck. Fair if this was the reason for this change specifically, the change isn't bad, I just think you could improve the returns per month, and almost guaranteed you'd get more subscribers, and you want something like the elite on a majority of players (ideally higher than 50%) since subscriptions are more inclined to promote player retention and respending.

Jumpy

As I said, we cannot give more bang for the buck. The buck is maxed. We could really only give more bang if we increased the buck.

Minifie

You can't increase completely virtual items that have, outside of said world, 0 inherit value? I don't exactly get how the logic trains there.

Thaisen

Jumpy said:

The membership is already such a good deal that there is no way we can reduce the cost. 

A good deal compared to what? The price of other credits? Okay... arguable. To other real world expectations? I don’t think so

Rakdos

Jumpy said:

As I said, we cannot give more bang for the buck. The buck is maxed. We could really only give more bang if we increased the buck.

I have to disagree with this. Compared to the eye watering costs of credits and what they actually get you, it might seem like it. But it's just not worth it and I cancelled my elite.

Everything about this game is just too expensive and needs to be reduced, or make changes around skills not being gated behind credits and scale with your level.

Jumpy

Well, they have value in the game.

For example. Adding more credits means more credits will not be bought in other ways. 25 bucks for 150 credits a month is a fantastic deal just by itself not including all of the other items. That is the equivalent of credits at 16.6 cents each. 

Changing them from bound credits to normal credits means other people will not need to buy credits as much.

You can also now get all of those credits upfront. So for 300 bucks, you get 1525 to 1800 credits (19.6 to 16.6 cents per credit). Even without all of the other benefits, that is the best price for credits you can get. The No-Brainer credits are 16.6 as well.

Have characters and login every day? That is about another credit per day, something like 25 a month. That is another 300 credits per year for just one character. If you have 3 or 4, that is 1000+ more credits of value before we even get to chests. If you add that to the membership credit value, credits are getting down to 10 cents each.

There is just no way we can give away more stuff. The membership is the best deal in the game, more than the no-brainer packages.

Lenn

If you have 3-4 characters that you're playing every day, big credit purchases are worth less to the player.

Bound credits also have diminishing value over time due to the constant addition of new stuff, some of which can be bought with bound credits but most of which cannot be.

Jumpy

Lenn said:

If you have 3-4 characters that you're playing every day, big credit purchases are worth less to the player.

Bound credits also have diminishing value over time due to the constant addition of new stuff, some of which can be bought with bound credits but most of which cannot be.

Right. I agree that memberships will be of less value to players who have all the skills they want and own all the artifacts they need on all of their characters. 

Caelan

So then subscription numbers are up overall quarter to quarter because of the value?

Atalkez

Jumpy said:

As I said, we cannot give more bang for the buck. The buck is maxed. We could really only give more bang if we increased the buck.

Except it still offers no bang whatsoever to people at end game. I have no need for an xp bonus, nor bound credits. Seems to be a lot of tone deafness on this subject going on. It IS a good deal, if you slot into the ever decreasing subset of the game this helps.

Jumpy

Heh. Yes, membership numbers are fine.

Namino

"There is just no way we can give away more stuff. The membership is the best deal in the game, more than the no-brainer packages."

The best deal. In game.

The thinking here is seriously, seriously flawed.

You are not competing only with yourself in a closed system. The currency your players are spending is part of an open system. The IRE Elite membership isn't just stacking up against your own credit deals, where yes, it performs favorably. Your customers (us) are comparing the dollar they spend on Achaea to the dollar they spend everywhere else in their life. Broadly, you are competing with every good and service that your customers pay for, and are trying to convince them that your product is worth it.

If that's too broad, then specifically your competition is the other subscription to digital media and games available right now, where IRE performs very poorly by comparison. It is more expensive and less benefit than subscriptions to similar freemium games.

And if the very best deal you can offer under performs against the spread of your competitors, what does that say about the other deals you offer?

Adrik

Some people DO NOT WANT BCR.

Potential alternatives to BCR would be great. Ones that let users choose theirrewards. RoomCR, Bound MC, Talisman tokens to be turned in for caches for a particular set. Etc.

I don't have multiple characters to eat up those juicy daily lessons. I have the one (as retiring incentivizes a brand new character to use those retireCR).

Jumpy

If you have everything you need in terms of credits and lessons, the current memberships are not for you. We cannot add more to those memberships, because they would be too much. We are not going to change what they offer, because most players enjoy and use them, especially new players and players who like to have multiple characters, which is who they were designed for.

It would be interesting to offer an "end game" membership or something like that. We would have to remove credits/lessons and offer other things. Maybe we will spend some cycles thinking about that a little.

Minifie

This is all predicated on the existing credit prices, prices that haven't changed IIRC since the early 00s. 

While the argument of, "adding more credits/currency to the game affects the IG economy" is sound, bound credits exist specifically not to do this, same with lessons.

As the credit market prices increase, but gold access decreases, new players have no way to dig in quick and easy without forking out cash, and you will have retention issues if basic necessities for the game are locked behind a paywall. Balancing the game to need less items is one way, but to obtain a simple kit of defensive artefacts (level 1 sip/mayan/regen/con) is 1550 credits. Currently, that's ***441 USD***, or twenty-one million gold. This is if you use your no brainers to tri trans, avoidance and things like tattoos/basic skills to make the game more palatable.

If you juggle monthly promos, I'll concede you can get the same for half that, at 220.5 USD. 

FOR 220.5 USD, I CAN ALMOST PURCHASE A SWITCH

FOR 441 USD I CAN BUY A SWITCH AND A HANDFUL OF GAMES, while STILL playing Achaea. 

You could buy a not-awful pc (not amazing but can get by!) and start working towards a game collection. 

Hoping your whales will stick around, and you can keep them hooked has gotten ya'll so far, but even whom I thought were new whales generally are returning players/retirees. Player retention is as bad as it has ever been, and with the power of mobile devices and what not allowing you to play a myriad of games for free already, or even pirating games they want for free on the move. Predicating everything based on numbers made up more than 20 years ago, in a vacuum where after a customer has spent money, they get 0 financial return potential (even games have the option to resell, or consoles). 

Wow can run on toasters, and costs 60USD for a shitload of game and 30 days sub. There are heaps of freemium MMO's you can just nab, and shiteloads of f2p games on mobile markets. Running at even 1c per credit on a monthly-gated system that guarantees regular income, as well as promotes player retention will benefit greater than trying to min-max theoretical profits on every single transaction. 

Atalkez

Jumpy said:

It would be interesting to offer an "end game" membership or something like that. We would have to remove credits/lessons and offer other things. Maybe we will spend some cycles thinking about that a little.

I’m sure the team has vastly more quantifiable evidence than I do on the subject, all I can gauge off of is the fact that new player generation has been declining for years. So I’m confused how Elite can “be great for new players”, when there are so few.

Regardless, constructive ideas would be the make Elite reward monthly promotional items. If the promotion that month is globes, the Elite member at that end game tier would get say 5 globes for free. Alternatively, any purchases could reward 20% more. So if I buy 10 globes I get 12 etc.

Thaisen

Jumpy said:

Heh. Yes, membership numbers are fine.

  

Reyson

I would absolutely pay a monthly fee to make multiclass lesson costs equivalent to the first one, for as long as that subscription is active. 

This wouldn't affect cooldowns/slots (so that you would still want to get the shards and stuff), and obviously, it wouldn't affect arties. But it would make switching somewhat practicable, since past the second class, the cost really becomes kind of nuts, and variety is honestly one of the things that might get me interested in pvp to the point of investing in it again. 

Shirszae

To be honest those all sound like canned responses.
The idea that any deal in Achaea can be described 'frankly such a good deal" is ridiculous. One needs only look outside their window to see how blatantly false It is. It feels like the hesitation and unhappiness over prices in Ire are on a steady hike, and closing your eyes over it is, if anything, only going to make it worse. 

Urnhlug

"I see that some people have pointed this out, but the main reason we instituted this change was for people who did not want to wait to get the XP bonus. We typically had an email a week asking to move memberships to another game or something like that, which we could not do. This was really to help them out. The membership is already such a good deal that there is no way we can reduce the cost. "

That's a pretty gross response, to be frank.

It's only "such a good deal" because every other thing is incredibly expensive to a point that is pretty ludicrous.

I understand that your thinking is "well if we made the membership $15/month, it would be the only place people would get their credits because they're so cheap", and you're right, because prices should simply be reduced across the board.

All I'm reading in these responses is "we don't want our players to get good value, we like to bleed whales dry as our income source".

If any other game on the planet made public responses like this regarding monetization, they'd be chastised.

Jovolo

It's a gamble to reduce the cost because there's no guarantee that it will bring more players in. With this many people continuing to pay for IRE and continuing to buy credits at the high cost that they've always been then why should they change their business model if the game maintains profitability?

I've spoken out about the paywall in Achaea for over a decade and while there have been minor changes to assist in start-up costs, more & more items of power being added keeps the paywall pretty firmly in place so in the end the goalposts are being moved around but the distance between the goalposts has never changed and probably never will.

Namino

When I first started pointing out how batshit it was that people were paying more than 6,000 dollars for the original Chenubian wings, half the playerbase was with me on the barricade, and the other half were taking aim with their muskets. It seems a lot more uh...

One sided this time.

Iaxus

Iaxus said:

There are certain threads I really wish our admin would respond to, and this is one. Even a "Came from the top, not our decision" would be better than silence. 

I regret this comment.

Telinus

Genuinely not surprised by the response at all. Dissapointed, but not surprised.

Surely logical option would be make it 25%/150cr from the start no?

I'm actually really struggling to see why its not that to begin with at a minimum*

*edit*

Tahquil

@Jumpy if it's the best you can do why do Imperian, Aetolia and Lusternia get additional currencies (wundercrysyals, tokens, iron coins) in their Elite but not us?

Astarod

Jumpy said:

As I said, we cannot give more bang for the buck. The buck is maxed. We could really only give more bang if we increased the buck.

Bang for Buck, Colorized, 2020

Vakvyr

Those responses are pretty disheartening.

Keorin

Let me start by saying that I keep up a monthly membership for a variety of reasons, and I don't expect to end it soon. I don't know if that makes my views worth more or less, but I figured I'd get it out there.

With that said:

Jumpy said:

The membership is already such a good deal that there is no way we can reduce the cost. 

This is simply empirically not true. The membership is better than buying straight credits, but so is everything. Promotions are regularly worth more than the membership, with people being willing to trade/buy the current promotion for credits, occasionally at a higher rate than -unbound- credits. Further, bound credits are simply worth less than unbound, especially since 75% of new purchases (talismans, cards, the tons of misc promotional stuff) can only be bought with unbound. In the heyday of globes, some players were offering straight bound for unbound trades, and this can still be seen in how players price artie-equivalent talismans. We know that the membership isn't that good a deal because we've seen, and participated in, better deals.

I'll avoid rehashing the things that everyone else is saying, but I feel like I need to point out how infuriating the admin response has been to player concerns, as of late. Like, I can honestly just not understand how the PR here has been so terrible. Player concerns or desires are consistently either ignored or brushed off, there's little communication about admin concerns, desires, or priorities, and it's been poisoning the well of player trust for the last several years.

We know that player retention isn't great, because we've watched the game's population shrinking, and seen friends leave. Those of us who fight have been watching the solo combat scene slowly dry up. We've watched the game's economics get more and more skewed, and watched as promotions have been a flood of gambling. We've seen organisations struggle in part because they can't get an active admin helping them do better for literal years on end. And we've seen a flood of new mechanics that have, at -best-, been sidegrades to what we had before, and at worst just make things that were already enjoyed more expensive. We know things aren't perfect, because we play this game, and we see the issues, so hearing over and over again how everything is great, player numbers are great, desired mechanics are impossible, promotions are great, credit prices are great, just gets tiring and frustrating. Either things at the top are completely out of touch with player experiences, or the admins are incapable of anything resembling a frank conversation about the state of the game, and I don't know which is worse.

I want to believe that the admin want this game to succeed as much as the players do. That we're working together to try and keep this game, and this world, alive far into the future. That us remaining wales aren't just here to get bled for everything we're willing to give until there's nothing left. But it's getting harder and harder to be optimistic.

Iaxus

In response to Keorin's post above. I'm a semi-whale. I'm not full level 3'd, but I have nearly every artie I want. This thread, specifically the response from @Jumpy , has completely ruined any hopes I had of the credit whoring and whale whoring turning around. 
The absolute gall and "Who gives a fuck?" attitude that pours out of a comment from a higher-up that starts with "Heh" to a legitimate question from someone who has been playing and enjoying this game for so long is appalling.

Prythe

I keep elite for the XP bonus.

Every once in awhile I look up and say, "I have bunches of bound credits, what might I buy?" and find something to buy. Eventually I'll maybe add a second class, but I'm not going to do so until I can insta tritrans, and even that isn't a given as I do most all in Dragon (although if I could be Druid in Cyrene, I'd add it immediately!).

The unbound credits I buy from market, house, and city sales I use as gifts and prizes to / for folks who are rarely or not likely spending credits as of yet.

I'm marketing the joy of credits for IRE!

I wonder if the Elite credits could somehow be in part unbound and partly bound.

I am willing to bet that wouldn't change the amount of credits others buy all that much - and would go a long way to reducing the quiet disgruntlement one sees across the board.

I just moved up about 5 ranks. 

Not because I Hunted a bunch, but because a bunch of folks went dormant.

I'm assuming that for the most part they have alts they are currently enjoying playing more at the moment, and when the tide turns (or returns! I'm so funny!) they swing back into their upper rank slots, but if I'm wrong, if IRE is losing folks who are that high in the rankings, the odds are that they're losing some revenue due to those folks going dormant as well.