Artefact Packages/Novice Cost Of Entry

24

Comments

  • I agree that lessons are the real issue. You can have mechanical fun and compete with midbies as long as you at least have tri-trans + survival/maybe avoidance even with 0 arties, but the game is miserable being 1 trans, and 1 trans is all the game really gives you by leveling up.
  • edited September 2018
    Edit: I copied stuff from the website and it made everything go blue, can't figure out how to fix it.

    You guys are really forgetting about some things that are available to newbies.

    Level 80 =

    200 bound credits from leveling up
    400 lessons from leveling up
    ~150 lessons from starting out

    Additionally -

    -> All characters under the in-game age of 40 are eligible to purchase 50
       bound credits in a special sale for the special price of 5000 gold per
       credit! Use GAMBLINGSALE BUY <# of credits> to take advantage and see

  • The Gambling Sale was due to certain people breaking the game and nearly ruining the economy and not something that you can guarantee to last forever.

    1 trans ability sucks.

    Monks can get tekura, but now they're defensively weaker and will have a harder time hunting because everything hurts more due to the fact that they won't have much if any Kaido. Literally no one can get into baseline PVP without dumping money. Unless they maybe just do not put any lessons into class skills and instant-get Elemental Lord so they can drop into Survival.

    The main issue is lessons, sure, but that doesn't excuse the fact that a lot of the more recent promotions have been gambling (and 2 years ago almost a complete lie on one of the rewards, but that's a story for another day).  $10 for a token spin at the wheel?  Really?  Not to mention that you can get a spin for 25 bcr in game, but that's absurd., to what I believe is a ridiculous degree.  Maybe some of you folks have enough disposable income for Achaea to become what it is for you.. but entry level newbies are not gonna shell out that much.
  • Cooper said:

    I don't really disagree with anything you posted, but I will point out... You don't have to buy them unbound from creditsales. If you buy them bound, and still have the conversion bonus, you'll get the 2.5 bonus lessons as if you bought them unbound and converted them. And likely save a decent bit of gold.

  • @Cooper That's a fair point. I haven't bashed in like ~5 years so I have no idea how long it would take to hit 80 and rack up that amount of gold. I imagine it might take quite a while as a new player, but maybe not.

    Can someone fill me in over PMs about how the game was broken, re: gambling sale?
  • Oh, that's cool, didn't know that!

    I don't disagree that the "recent" (2-3 years? I don't remember) of gambling promotions have taken advantage of addictive personalities, but there has never been a time where what you pay and what you get has been a better ratio for players. Previously the best credit sale was a 40% bonus. When the wheel first came out, it was an average of like 120-130% bonus, and globes were even better. Now that they've toned down the caches to only have 1 piece normally, you're looking at an 80-90% bonus roughly. This is MUCH better for players than just straight bonus credits, I promise you.

    It does make me feel sad to watch the trend of a couple specific people make new characters over and over and each one tries to play the talisman game and fails because all they care about is getting more spins/caches/etc and doesn't care about the value they get. And it makes me sad when people I know don't have the money to spend on stuff go and spend money because of the massive urge/impulse to buy gambling promo stuff.

    At the end of the day, this is what nearly every popular game on the market has been doing in recent years. With Achaea/IRE's dwindling population they don't have a real choice - they either shut the doors, or do what gets them the money.

    You guys can bitch about the whales and how it imbalances the game all you want - but just remember that IRE would have shut down 10+ years ago without them. Just bad glad that Makarios is in charge of PK balance in Achaea, and that arties are less impactful now than they have ever been.

  • I'm not saying whales are a problem, Cooper.

    Every game more-or-less loves them, and it benefits as a whole due to it. I'm mostly just bitching about the whole fact that lessons are a necessary component to play this game, and by playing the game alone, you get enough for 1 trans class skill. Maybe pushing to 1.5.

    Iron Elite helps alleviate this, sort of, but it also is $25 a month, when other MMOs at this point are at $12 or so. (Not that we should be imitating them. What Irom Elite gives is good, but I just couldn't bring myself to put that in alongside potentially doing a second job with some city/house stuff (that's probably why I don't do that crap.)

    Having your main class skills, for your first class, grow to trans as you level up would seriously help alleviate this issue, probably entirely. It makes the whole "I don't like this class now that I've gotten it to trans" feeling for a player when they first start (and already dropped say $70 on the credit package + lesson package) much.. much less obscene.  If you want to go a different class because you dislike your first one (or you have to because city gated classes) ? You are literally SoL. You won't be able to trans your new class, which makes you more unlikely to to hunt efficiently to be able to trans.. which leads to it just being a better investment in your time to just make an entirely new character and spend another $70.

    Seriously.  That's why I had to stop playing my first character. I went from Monk to Druid, then they changed Druid's 3rd ability in the tradeskill update, and I suddenly had that instead of the tradeskill I wanted.. and then had no way to effeciently hunt (because fuck satyr as a race.  -CON is awful)...
  • Cooper said:
    Edit: I copied stuff from the website and it made everything go blue, can't figure out how to fix it.

    You guys are really forgetting about some things that are available to newbies.

    Level 80 =

    200 bound credits from leveling up
    400 lessons from leveling up
    ~150 lessons from starting out

    Additionally -

    -> All characters under the in-game age of 40 are eligible to purchase 50
       bound credits in a special sale for the special price of 5000 gold per
       credit! Use GAMBLINGSALE BUY <# of credits> to take advantage and see
    The 1000 lesson deal is great! i will hopefully get them eventually when i scrape up enough money, however i've bashed to 70 in less then a week, and i haven't once had enough gold to spare for any of the credits in the gambling sale let alone house credits. I've been doing a lot of questing for gold ect, but it all goes into getting set up and staying set up at the moment, so i guess the gambling credits and house credits aren't really available until AFTER you hit 80 realistically

  • edited September 2018
    EDIT: I said something about business models relying on gambling and decided it was 2 edgy 4 me.
  • Holly hell, Tvistor still exists?

    Hi Tvistor.
    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • IRE should be so good bang-for-buck that NOT having it is objectively worse, because it is consistent income. If 300 people are playing, all subbed, that’s 7500 per month to rely upon, you -do- cut a chunk off after costs to make up for people potentially unsubbing.

    personally, IRE would be something I couldn’t part with if:

    it came with a second class slotvthat transed at 1764 each, but the slot locks if you give up IRE
    the credits currently
    10 lessons per day on login
    ”elite” one character, which gets their “main slot class” tri trans+survival and avoidence (you can spend lessons into them, so if IRE drops you keep all the trans, but if you resub you get your special second 1764 class tri trans.

    axe the xp bonus

    this would give players:

    Single class, only pay 25 a month:
    good lesson and credit income
    a fully playable class WITH lessons gained from leveling and credits to spend where they would like to.
    worthwhile things locked to the sub so you REALLY don’t want to lose it.

    speaking to a number of people, the ire isn’t worth it for them, and newbies have to just sit and wait. With this system, subbing gives you instant rewards, with scaling bonuses for subbing longer AND a very worthy reward to hold onto that sub.

    this is my 2c though, so can be safely ignored.
  • Minifie said:
    IRE should be so good bang-for-buck that NOT having it is objectively worse, because it is consistent income. If 300 people are playing, all subbed, that’s 7500 per month to rely upon, you -do- cut a chunk off after costs to make up for people potentially unsubbing.

    personally, IRE would be something I couldn’t part with if:

    it came with a second class slotvthat transed at 1764 each, but the slot locks if you give up IRE
    the credits currently
    10 lessons per day on login
    ”elite” one character, which gets their “main slot class” tri trans+survival and avoidence (you can spend lessons into them, so if IRE drops you keep all the trans, but if you resub you get your special second 1764 class tri trans.

    axe the xp bonus

    this would give players:

    Single class, only pay 25 a month:
    good lesson and credit income
    a fully playable class WITH lessons gained from leveling and credits to spend where they would like to.
    worthwhile things locked to the sub so you REALLY don’t want to lose it.

    speaking to a number of people, the ire isn’t worth it for them, and newbies have to just sit and wait. With this system, subbing gives you instant rewards, with scaling bonuses for subbing longer AND a very worthy reward to hold onto that sub.

    this is my 2c though, so can be safely ignored.
    Sign me up

  • edited September 2018
    Or....

    You could just spend time leveling up and learning your skills as you get them, all those abilities you all want dont help if you dont know how to use them.

    The more you bash, the easier it gets, the more gold per hour you can make, the more credits you can buy off the market.. etc etc... 

    I will just keep my options to myself, jus sounds like no one wants to put in the effort required, that almost everyone else has. It's usually those people who sit in there city all day bringing this issue up.
  • Hate to say it, but I find myself agreeing with Proficy. Nothing in life comes free, and entitlement attitudes are running rampant in today's culture. Most of the older players have put in their time. Why shouldn't newbies?

    I mean, IRE is already giving out very nice deals to newer players. While it couldn't hurt to throw in a little more, this is a business. If they aren't earning a decent profit, they'll end up shutting the doors. None of us wants that. I see absolutely nothing wrong with newer players putting in the time, effort, and money that I have if they want the same benefits that I have.
    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?"


  • Proficy said:
    Or....

    You could just spend time leveling up and learning your skills as you get them, all those abilities you all want dont help if you dont know how to use them.

    The more you bash, the easier it gets, the more gold per hour you can make, the more credits you can buy off the market.. etc etc... 

    I will just keep my options to myself, jus sounds like no one wants to put in the effort required, that almost everyone else has. It's usually those people who sit in there city all day bringing this issue up.
    I don't entirely agree with this thread, but I don't think that's fair either. I've played since about 2010, until very recently as a free player. Granted, the barriers to entry aren't as high now as they were back before free curing (boy, as a penniless high school student, did that suck), but it was incredibly hard to be competitive at anything except RP skill or writing. I submitted to the Bardics (which not everyone is good at) every time I could think of anything, because even a Merit would get me some precious credits, and that option isn't available to people anymore. Also, occasionally people who -did- have incomes gave Jir gifts. Even so, I eventually I started taking portrait commissions on forums, which is an ooc method and also not available to everyone. 

    I do think it's possible to participate and integrate into the game as a free player-- I've done it. The big problems I've experienced are a) when a player (at least me) has difficulty doing something or finds something frustrating, the widespread response is "why don't you have/get the artie that fixes that" and b) the -expectation- that experienced players are paid players, and should have all the things that paid players can afford (like tri-trans).
    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • To get into PVP, at any compatible level, it requires roughly 7000 lessons.

    As cooper said above..

    Level 80 =

    200 bound credits from leveling up
    400 lessons from leveling up
    ~150 lessons from starting out

    That is, if you spend everything on lessons... 1750 lessons.  one transcendent skill, assuming that you spent nothing on survival, fitness, philosophy, etc..

    2000 lessons for $20 gets you a second trans skill, and maybe a little bit extra to something else.
    300 bcr for $50 gets you 1800 lessons.

    That's still only 5550 lessons.  Which is still not enough to get you to tritrans + survival (not even going to count Avoidance, though it is a necessity.)

    $70 investment isn't enough to get you actually into combat.  Let's assume they drop another $40 for 100cr during the current credit promo.

    40% extra + 1 mayan crown= roughly 170cr or 1445 lessons.

    So, during our current best credit promo..  it's about $110 investment to be able to get into PVP by level 80.  Not assuming that you want any arties to actually survive certain things.

    I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, but realistically, if the main class skills (or even just the first two!) were cut down to scale automatically as you level, it'd have a lot less of an entry level investment to get into the game proper.  Sure, some classes don't require all three to hunt / pvp.  (Bard's, technically, don't NEED harmonics for hunting or pvp.  Hell, they don't even need voicecraft for hunting.  It's just nice.)

    Players who are younger and might not have disposable income to drop $110 are kind of in a bad position.  Those that can would still benefit from getting at least 1 skill for free as they level up, because it means they could start saving up for an artie, work on a trade skill, more seafarers, etc etc.
  • As a long time player who has literally grown up playing Achaea on various characters, I personally won't be spending anymore money here because I find the costs to be unreasonable now that I'm older. Yes, I've done the "earn your way" and have Dragons in most of the cities. I've also spent thousands and thousands of dollars. This is just my opinion. I know there are a lot of players who can and don't mind the costs.

    I'd like to point out that I spend $15 a month on monthly subscriptions in other games and I find that to be a fair price. The subscription benefits from here and there are very comparable as far as what you get, but I have no interest in canceling the others because of the value I'm getting so they'll likely have my steady $15 a month for years to come. They also just added more benefits to the subscription without me having to pay a penny more. That makes me want to stay even more. This is also a tiered system where if you pay for 6 months, 3 months or one month in advance you'll get more savings depending on the amount you paid for. Maybe IRE can do something like this where if you have an active membership for three months or more, you'll be eligible to purchase more than just one no-brainer package.

    This has the possibility of working for old and new players alike because there will always be things to spend your lessons into: mini skills, sea faring, trade skills, and multiclass. They could create more options to dip lessons into so there's no real cap on what people can invest into.

    I could be wrong, but I thought I'd point out the reason I spend my monthly subscriptions elsewhere. Have nothing but love for IRE and this community and want nothing but success for us all.
  • edited September 2018
    I feel like anyone who's saying "just go and earn it like everyone else" seems to be forgetting they did that when it was 100x easier to do that. Actually make a character, or find someone new to make one, before trying to call people out on being lazy, entitled, whatever. I've done the math on it, and frankly it isn't pretty at all. Hell, I have gone through that experience recently.
    A new person with no investment (or no investment beyond no-brainer stuff) isn't going to be hitting the gold cap for a long time. Unless you're going to sit there and say doing nothing but bashing for 7-8+ hours a day. Every single day. Is actually reasonable. And nowadays the gold cap itself, even, isn't a large amount of credits in the grand scheme of things.
    Sorry but wanting to 'play the game' in a reasonable amount of time, isn't lazy or entitled. It's something any normal person expects from a game these days. Go and look at literally any other online game, and compare the time it takes. Your attitude towards new people wanting this, is frankly awful at best. Certainly not going to get new players sticking around, with that kind of attitude.

    eta: Even BDO and Maplestory take significantly less time/investment to actually get to a good/comfortable point in the game. And they're probably the two most p2w games on the market right now.

  • Bad attitude or not, everything Ismay has I’ve either worked my ass off to get, or bought with ooc money. Nothing was easy or handed to me as you are implying. 

    Yes, expecting to be coddled to by a game that is not a life necessity is most certainly entitlement, at the very least. That attitude is literally everywhere now. It is so popular, in fact, that expecting people to apply effort in any area of life is now considered “toxic” expectations.

    Sorry, but I can’t agree with much of this entire thread aside from maybe adding a bit to the current novice packages to make trans class skills possible quicker.
    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?"


  • This is a game, something we do for fun. Why the fuck should we have to "work our asses off" for it? Rewards for completing  a task are one thing, having to spend 500hrs and / or £2000 to compete in PvP is another. The game has changed and we can't ignore the fact that we have a very large number of people walking around with the equivalent of £20 - £25,000 of wealth garnered over 15yrs plus and expect newbies to be ok with that. No, I'm not expecting that they can compete with Profixy and Co after only a few weeks, but FFS give people tri trans at Logosian and let them actually play the game. 

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • edited September 2018
    Ismay said:
    Yes, expecting to be coddled to by a game that is not a life necessity is most certainly entitlement, at the very least. That attitude is literally everywhere now. It is so popular, in fact, that expecting people to apply effort in any area of life is now considered “toxic” expectations.

    I agree, expecting to be coddled is entitlement.
    Expecting to actually be able to play the game at a comfortable point, without needing to spend upwards of 500-1000+ hours first- and that's still relying on the goodwill of others as Achilles said- Is simply a realistic expectation. I challenge you to find me any other similar game (old or new) where this is the case for a new player, or an experienced player restarting from scratch, even.
    Do the math before calling people out.

  • Yet, here you all are. Still playing after all this time. Must not be too much of a financial hardship. With all the references to Proficy and maxed out players, this sounds like a really bad case of the green eyed monster. You do realize that these whales are the ones carrying the game, right?

    As for newbies, I already said that additional benefits that give them easier trans class skills is needed. From some of the comments I’ve read though, I get the feeling that there’s a lot of resentment towards the above mentioned whales...
    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?"


  • 'Raise your hand if you're not here. Everyone's present? Good.'
  • Ismay said:
    Yet, here you all are. Still playing after all this time. Must not be too much of a financial hardship. With all the references to Proficy and maxed out players, this sounds like a really bad case of the green eyed monster. You do realize that these whales are the ones carrying the game, right?

    As for newbies, I already said that additional benefits that give them easier trans class skills is needed. From some of the comments I’ve read though, I get the feeling that there’s a lot of resentment towards the above mentioned whales...
    People with money aren't the only thing that carries the game.  It's also people with time, who are willing to spend (often absurd) amounts of energy and creativity on the game world. Who may be teenagers /poor students who can be on so much because they don't work 9 to 5s, but probably don't buy a lot of credits.


    ________________________
    The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."

    (Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
  • edited September 2018
    I'd rather have 10 jurixes than 10 cains, just saying. It's great that whales give money to IRE, but without player creativity + work this game would not keep a single newbie.

    (Which is why I always say that orgs need more, not less, income from OOC purchases!)

    All of which is a complete tangent, by the way, because whales will exist whether you give new players 3-6 trans for free or not. There's thousands and thousands of dollars worth of stuff people can buy if they really want to.
  • edited September 2018
    Ismay said:
    Yet, here you all are. Still playing after all this time. Must not be too much of a financial hardship. With all the references to Proficy and maxed out players, this sounds like a really bad case of the green eyed monster. You do realize that these whales are the ones carrying the game, right?

    As for newbies, I already said that additional benefits that give them easier trans class skills is needed. From some of the comments I’ve read though, I get the feeling that there’s a lot of resentment towards the above mentioned whales...
    MKO would still be around if whales were the thing that carried the game so much.
    Way to completely miss the point, though. Considering nobody ever said anything about whales being bad, or toxic, or whatever other buzzword you wanna throw out. Feel free to create a new char and spend no money on it, then see how long it takes you to get anything whatsoever done. Your statement about newbies pretty much agrees with what everyone has been saying, though.

  • Pyori said:
    I feel like anyone who's saying "just go and earn it like everyone else" seems to be forgetting they did that when it was 100x easier to do that.
    This is 100% wrong. It has never been easier than right now.

    Credit prices are very high right now on the credit market, yeah, but bashing generates more gold than it used to by quite a bit. Back in the day, getting 30k per hour was good, 40k was great, 50k was freaking awesome, and 60k was for the people who lied about it like Exelethril did. Now an unartied dragon can get 50k an hour, and the top artied people can push 130k under the right circumstances, and 100k easily.

    Promotions are as good as they have ever been, and it is possible for people to spend very little but get a lot (ask Seragorn how much he has spent IRL since he started trading globes/wheel spins/talismans/etc, it is $0 or very close to it).

    No brainer packages, cheaper bound credits for novices, better gold while bashing, better experience while bashing, IRE elite, etc.

    I still think that by level 80 with a $20 no brainer lessons purchase you should be able to be tri trans + focus, but the whole "it is worse now than it has ever been" bullshit needs to stop.

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