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Iron Elite Membership Updates!

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Comments

  • PrythePrythe
    Why are we assuming that @Sarapis is making these decisions directly? He's a business person. He's hired people to run his business. They are doing the best they can given their overall mission and directives under which they operate.

    Then again, Arte Moreno just mucked up a deal Billy Eppler put together which would have been amazing for the Angels.

    Good thing I'm #Dodgers.

    But back to Matt, it is possible he doesn't know. It is possible he does know and has seen the numbers.

    The "can't reduce costs" could be to meet their budgetary needs, imaginary currency or not. 

    Yes, that is a flawed and vacuous argument.

    So we have two options:

    As we have been doing, let's come up with plans which make us happier while not reducing their current revenue stream.

    Or, come up with plans which reduce that streat so greatly that they have to adjust or shut the doors.

    The former might create movement, the latter might lose us the game we all love for whatever our reasons.

    And frankly, I did not know who Jumpy was prior to this thread. Perhaps I should have and had missed something, but THAT said I offer my professional services, free of charge, to help with creating responses and/or announcements which, even while including the same content do a better job of not pissing off the customer base.


    - To love another person is to see the face of G/d
    - Let me get my hat and my knife
    - It's your apple, take a bite
    - Don't dream it ... be it


  • KogKog
    My .02 would be to change Membership rewards to allow some customization?

    Primary: bound credits, OR 75% of the credits, but unbound, OR 3 MC

    Progression: Lessons/day OR 1 promo item (lowest tier) OR 1 MC OR 1 omnicache (open for any set) OR 2 legenddeck sleeves

    Activity: xp bonus OR gold cap increase OR x-use death call OR dragon scales OR 2 random MC elixirs

    Customize your membership perks to improve your play experience, based on what you want to acquire. Sick of bound cr? Get some crowns next month. Like the promo and want a spin? Swap to that for this month. Bashing for Dragon? Xp bonus! Hate bashing because you got Dragon? Get some elixirs to sell or share with your friends.

    Does it add new items? Sure. Does it also give more people a reason to subscribe? I think so.
  • PrythePrythe
    I should add it's clear that there are revenue goals in place. The objective is to invent different / various means of getting there which should / could ultimately increase that revenue flow.


    - To love another person is to see the face of G/d
    - Let me get my hat and my knife
    - It's your apple, take a bite
    - Don't dream it ... be it


  • AstarodAstarod



    Some free help with your business model. 
    The Divine voice of Twilight echoes in your head, "See that it is. I espy a tithe of potential in your mortal soul, Astarod Blackstone. Let us hope that it flourishes and does not falter as so many do."

    Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
  • NaminoNamino
    ITT:


  • TreyTrey
    I have to echo something that a lot of other people have already touched on - the notion that "we can't give more bang for the buck" on a completely arbitrary, limitless thing (an in-game currency, in this case credits), something that costs you effectively nothing to produce, is asinine. You have every ability to control the cost not only for Iron Elite, but for credit packages as well. You are literally selling someone an increase in the value of a variable attached to their character, that that character can then voluntarily lower to gain access to a pre-written line of code that will then alter other variables attached to that character. You aren't mining bitcoin here, there's no massive investment of time and electricity to produce credits.

    I'm also not stupid - I understand that Achaea has a small number of paid staff, and costs necessary to maintain and keep the server running. There needs to be a stream of revenue to cover those costs. If what you're actually saying is that you're riding the wire, or having to write bouncing payroll checks to your producers and coders, I can appreciate that. MUDs are ridiculously niche, and we're not stagnant. There's new content and events on a reasonably regular schedule. Shit costs money. Enticing people to commit to a larger payout seems like it would drive revenue, not see a loss. Let's give a good example: lowering the cost of the highest tier to $239.88 (an effective $19.99/mo) would save a subscriber $60 over the course of the year compared to paying $24.99 each month for twelve months. You could view it as lost revenue, sure, but you can also view it as guaranteed revenue. We're locked in for the year at that point, there's no such thing as a prorated refund (or many instances of any refunds with Achaea, for obvious and understandable reasons). That sounds like a win to me, but then I don't know what your revenue stream requirements are, so it's admittedly speculative whether that would be sustainable.

  • AdrikAdrik
    Dang. Nearly $2500 in 5ish months from Atalkez.

    Oof.
  • NaminoNamino
    The survey seems to indicate by reducing the price of credits by half they can move 65% of the game from spending nothing to spending 20-100 (36%) or 101-201 (29%). Its potentially confounded though. So the argument that reducing prices will lead to lost revenue is a bit tenuous to me.
  • UrnhlugUrnhlug
    @Prythe There's a reason the biggest games in the industry don't charge more for their base cost (it's almost always $59.99) or more for their monthly fee (it's almost always $15/mo, or less in many cases), because they've realized that even though increasing the price will have a lot of people staying, it'll have a lot more people leaving.

    I'm under the impression that any budget goals are essentially short-sighted, simple math. "There's 10 people paying us $100+ a month right now, if we reduce prices, they'll only pay us $50." Is as far as it sounds like they got. Which is absurd.

    There's also a lot of ways to encourage spending at low prices, and allow for easier steps up to higher tiers of stuff.

    Giving away Tier 1 artefacts as part of the membership deal, or making multi-classing/customization/crafting more sensible at it's lowest levels to allow people to break into it with little spending would get a lot more people paying in the long term.


  • CaelanCaelan
    Atalkez said:


    I feel for them, I really do. I also agree with @Namino that this "unavailable" nonsense is ridiculous. I won't be spending any more money ($969.85 in 2020 so far, $1516.73 in final quarter 2019) until this man comes and responds to these criticisms with some decency. I can buy my own burning man tickets, expensive cameras to take photos with, travel to other places that I would want to see, etc.

    Tl;DR: why should I keep helping you buy yours?

    Agree with most of what you said. In 2019 I only spent $600 total despite being tempted to spend far more. So far in 2020 I have spent $0.00 with nothing in sight to sway me to spend more.

    I realized that I had been spending a lot of money (pre-dormancy, up to somewhere in the realm of $35,000 - 40,000 if not more) and sending Matt on some pretty sweet vacations. So instead, in 2018 I spent about $2000 (plus being signed up for the Elite membership because I felt like it was helping to keep the doors open) because I bought into the promos not realizing they were behind so many levels of gambling. In 2019 I've spent my disposable income on paying down debt (30k), upgrading my FL house (50k), buying land (20k), bought my youngest a car (8k), done some improvements on my CT house, among other things. So I guess these promos helped me in that regard since I just stopped buying into them.

    'Helping to keep the doors open' has ceased to feel like my responsibility in light of the promos and gambling that are near impossible to complete, the broken 'new shinies' that seem to go unfinished to push for the next 'new shiny next month', etc.. so I no longer keep the membership going because there isn't anything in it for Caelan - and as a player it just feels like it is encouraging them to keep up the path they are on.  So I guess I voted with my dollars, as paltry as $25/m is to me personally. But it has also translated into not buying anything else from the game either because of the constant feel of being milked (one could argue I already have everything I could want anyway, but I still don't have all the talismans and cards I want, but won't buy credits to complete them because of the money-grab 'feel' of actually getting the pieces and cards I want. It took me over 18 months to get ONE piece I wanted/needed to replace the full functionality of a nerfed artifact I had already spent about 1500cr on).  I've said repeatedly I don't envy the devs having to walk the tightrope and catch all the shit/flak they do, but something should change to offer more value or something, because I don't see me spending anything anymore.


  • IsmayIsmay
    Agreed. So so tired of getting content that I'll never use because the cost is either way too steep, it's too much hassle to deal with, or the "feature" is about as helpful/convenient as trying to dig through a stone wall with a plastic spoon. Useless features, and a waste of our admins' coding time when we want features we can USE!
    Give us -real- shop logs! Not another misinterpretation of features we ask for, turned into something that either doesn't help at all, or doesn't remotely resemble what we wanted to begin with.

    Thanks!

    Current position of some of the playerbase, instead of expressing a desire to fix problems:

    Vhaynna: "Honest question - if you don't like Achaea or the current admin, why do you even bother playing?"


  • MorsulMorsul
    No one's being forced to buy or subscribe. If you don't like it, don't get it.
  • NaminoNamino
    Consumers aren't helpless. They vote with their wallets, as many people have done in this thread, and they vote by voicing their opinions, which we're also doing. The fact that every major company has people running PR for them indicates that customer satisfaction is something to be prioritized.

    "Don't buy it if you don't like it" is a weightless argument when you accept IRE is a business and look at general business practices.
  • MorsulMorsul
    If you don't buy in, that's a pretty clear indication that you are voting against company policy. Saves you a buck, too.
  • AtalkezAtalkez
    Morsul said:
    If you don't buy in, that's a pretty clear indication that you are voting against company policy. Saves you a buck, too.
    Yes, and voicing concerns is also a vote against company policy. Not everyone who voices their opinion is also spending money that pulling would change anything on the financials.




    Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
  • MorsulMorsul
    Considering the management responses to this thread, it's clear that voicing opinions has a drastically lesser effect than simply not spending on membership, promotions, or sales.

    Heh.
  • NaminoNamino
    Morsul said:
    Considering the management responses to this thread, it's clear that voicing opinions has a drastically lesser effect than simply not spending on membership, promotions, or sales.

    Heh.

  • UrnhlugUrnhlug
    I also got to thinking that, to some degree them keeping credit prices so high makes them feel good about paying all the "volunteers" they have in credits, because to the volunteers it feels like "wow I'm saving some decent money through this", when in reality... it's just because everything is so overpriced.


  • CooperCooper
    The point of credit $$$ prices not going up is kind of a moot point IMO.

    When artefacts were introduced, the statistic/healing ones were significantly more powerful than now.

    After balance changes (artefact nerfs) over the years, they are worth far less.

    For example: against an unartied person, fully artied Grook kai choke did 69%-73% of someone's max health. Now the same attack will do about 35% (second number could be a bit off, first number is accurate though). 50% less effective.

    SoA used to protect from DSB, BBT, etc. Now it does not.

    Stats used to scale better as well, now diminishing returns start at 12.

    Sip/regen/bracelet used to be more effective because most player attacks had a much larger flat damage %. Now new abilities scale heavily to max health, and old abilities have been updated.

    Wings used to be a free escape, now everyone has them.

    Dexterity used to be extremely powerful because almost every attack could be dodged, and accuracy on attacks was much lower than now.

    All of these changes were important for the balance of the game, but reduced the effectiveness of artefacts.

  • CobaultCobault
    Zbaco said:
    In my more pessimistic moments, I wonder if IRE has already decided, at some level, to shut things down and is just trying to milk the playerbase for as long as possible before pulling the plug. Threads like this *really* make me wonder.
    I'm concerned I'm not the only person that has thought about this. Then you add in the fact that now people can buy Elite status upfront for a year?

    Reminds me of some shit I've seen before. We had a restaurant in my hometown years back that did an awesome deal on giftcards. Basically, if you bought one for like $50, you'd get another $50 loaded to it for free. The downside was, you couldn't use -any- of the gift card balance til after Christmas! This special started being advertised in like June or July. Mid-summer.
    Fast forward to the week before Christmas, owner brings his staff in and tells them to help themselves to all the food and whatnot in the cooler and store. He then skips town with all that pocketed gift card money, a big chunk of embezzled money and shit while apparently owing the IRS loads in unpaid taxes, which was the motivation for the scheme. To my knowledge, he got outta America and went back to wherever he was from and no doubt has been living comfortably. The store of course was shut down (he leased the building too, so, he didn't even lose anything substantial there!)

    The relevance of this story is me pointing out that I could totally see moneyman at the top (whom has openly stated that text MUDs are a dying genre and shit) flipping a "fuck it, maximise profits and nothing else before the ship sinks" switch and calling it a day.

    I didn't have Elite, but I contemplated buying arrows like I did keys last month. I'll conform with everyone else and vote with my wallet. <3
  • RakdosRakdos
    "Wings used to be a free escape, now everyone has them."

    Speak for yourself, only artifact I own is a L1 Dirk.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    edited February 2020
    Vhaith said:
    'If you don't like it, don't read the thread.'
    Look at his post history. It's literally just edgelord shit-stirring, with sprinkles of whinging. You could take Archaeon more seriously.
  • MorsulMorsul
    edited February 2020
    I like the thread, so I will keep reading it. Have popcorn and everything.

    That you have spent thousands on IRE is, in fact, what has given them the power to steer their company in any direction they choose. This is the power they are exercising now, and is well within their right to do so. We are customers, not shareholders. We can make complaints if there have been illegalities in transactions (such as bait-and-switches), but that's it.

    IRE is, at the end of the day, a business. Just like Apple, Amazon, Wal-mart, or that small restaurant down the road from your house. Sure, they may want to provide good products and services, but their prime objective is the acquisition of capital.

    I actually want to salute IRE for sticking hard to their guns on this one. Too often have job-creators been maligned for taking care of themselves, as if it's too much to ask to be compensated well for the work they do. Freebie culture is destroying lives. Just ask any artist you know. Exposure as payment, anybody?

    I, for one, stand with IRE.
  • VinzentVinzent
    Lol.  
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