Tbh, people have complained about the devaluing of shops in cities. They're devalued because the shop stalls are too cheap. Fix the larger problem by admitting you screwed up and allow full stall/shelf refunds. It sucks, yeah, but it addresses the larger problem.
I recently purchased a shop stall through token wares. I agree that the current devaluation of shops and their wares suck. Do what Selthis and Ahkan have said. Without the tokens, I will probably be cancelling my elite as well.
This is starting to veer off topic but I'd rather not go back to the "good old days" when only eight people could own shops in a given organization, and half of them were owned by guilds in perpetuity.
As mentioned I don't have a strong opinion on tokens in Elite. However, it's a rather airline-like decision to start taking away amenities from something without lowering the price. If the membership was dropped to $20 (well, $19.99) per month it might be a less bitter pill.
I look at it like this, the other IRE games have a larger population -> larger population means more ways to earn credits / tokens (coins?) in-game because of the higher supply -> why spend my $?
EDIT: This means that I don't have to have elite myself in order to easily find elite- "bonuses". And this doesn't seem to be a problem in the other IRE games or else they would have removed the coins or whatever they have on their elite as well, no?
For the monthly things to provide tokens.. Why would I keep elite when I can still get tokens IC? (this is basically because I am transcendent in everything and got a few arties already, but so is a large part of the playerbase). Also wouldn't that be counter-productive to the entire idea behind that there is to many tokens around? Reading through the other posts here, -to me-, people are more or less saying, "keep things as it is and I will even though I don't really need it throw 25$ of my paycheck every month." Without knowing businesses very well that sounds like a fairly decent thing to keep.
I'm honestly pretty neutral on shop stalls. I get that they devalue city shops, but that is only because Caanae means your possible customer base is 3x larger if its in Caanae. I'd be fine if they were refunded and made available for credits and shelf cost refunded. I'd also be okay with no real change other than an increase in the base cost of the stall to 50 and I guess if there isn't something in place a tax for non city shops. Call it a protection fee and make it pretty steep (roughly 8-10k an ic year maybe?)
When it comes down to it, I think removing the soulstones from token wares solves 90% of your problems and no change is necessary beyond rotating some of the wares/adding new stuff.
The 'auto enemy (unwelcome, w/e) on character creation' is dumb. What was it meant to stop? People making newbie alts to let raiders in? Getting into somewhere is trivial anyway, if you really wanted to get there. The only thing this did was remove a ton of RP that used to exist and make city-based shops see significantly less traffic.
Magick and Demonic were barred from entering AM places, and Demonic was also barred from entering Magick. Everybody in the world was auto-enemied from Stavenn as soon as they knew you existed because of the high amount of totally legitimate new characters, who were totally not alts, being used as raid points, and Stavenn's the one city that could have been accepting of everybody.
About the only cross-circle thing that was allowed was AM inside of Magick cities, and that was on its way out due to the "I'm not enemied, we should totally raid!" and AM's "Why are you in Kinsarmar! Heresy!" mindset.
Unwelcome was welcome if just for the removal of "nobody online can enemy, let's go abuse the system!" and pre-emptive enemy statuses it brought along with it, as well as the "Antioch is getting aggressive. Let's enemy every Antiochian who might raid!" stuff.
I know that I was personally so tired of that crap that I was pushing for more places to adopt the Stavennite pre-enemy method.
Also, something something something tokens.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I feel like I should add that not all the stalls are actually from tokens. Once upon a time they used to be an auction artifact instead.
I do think that you'd want to be careful trying to force a refund on people who have purchased them, paying with tokens or otherwise, as shopkeepers are about the most rabid group of people in the game.
** Yes, we're aware of the problems. Please do NOT use any HELP files at the moment.**. ** And don't try them now just see if they're really broken. **. ** Or credit conversion. Try not to do anything much right now. **. ** Don't panic, normal service will be restored as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the wonders of conversation. **. *** We will be rebooting in about 60 seconds ***. ** Don't panic. Just...stay close to your rosaries **. ** Monetary offers for Salvation accepted. **.
I do think that you'd want to be careful trying to force a refund on people who have purchased them, paying with tokens or otherwise, as shopkeepers are about the most rabid group of people in the game.
The overlap with crafters basically ensures a dire threat of shanking when contemplating any changes to either I gotta imagine.
I think it's better to keep the tokens on elite, readjust pricing/remove items (soulstones) on token wares, and reduce the opportunities to buy tokens during monthly promotions to virtually nonexistent.
I used to have elite and stopped because there is more incentive for me to buy during the other monthly promotions to get all those little goodies that Selthis and I like.
I don't need membership credits, exp bonuses, and extra lessons.
2nd post ever on the general forums. I post when I'm inactive. Go figure.
Sincerely,
Member of the 0.1%
P.S. I would be fine reimbursing all those people who got stalls via tokens and just keep the auction only artifact stalls.
People go nuts over their shops, even if you don't actually make any gold until you've cleared ~8,000,000+ in profit. Add another ~400k to that for every flask in the shop.
TBH, I'd be surprised if even a third of the market stalls have paid themselves off or even come close to it. The only reason to buy one anymore is to have a portable locked room.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
One problem I have with the elite is the way it scales up.
One big thing the Iron Elite is supposed to do is help new players catch up to the established players. Having it start at 100 and scale up to 150 is sort of crappy in that regard. It'll take you 3 months to learn a skill at the "new subscriber" rate, which is pretty bad for playing catchup.
Having the tokens>credits conversion made that a lot more bearable and reduced that time by a third, but it also basically turned tokens into free credits for people like me, which I can understand you guys disliking.
So how about changing the conversion from tokens>credits to tokens>lessons? Catching up becomes easier(or at least doesn't get any harder, depending on your conversion ratios), and tokens don't just turn into credits towards my next artifact. Everybody wins, because the big barrier to newbies in this game, imo, isn't credits. It's lessons.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Theoretically, that still assigns them an admin assigned value, just take #lessons from token/6 and charge that much for it. Or I guess divide by 5, so they get some sort of "value" out of it.
It's an admin-assigned value in a way, but it's a value that's useless to most of us.
Figure, that value is at 32 credits, roughly. Most of us would want to sell for 32cr or an equvalent amount of gold. However, if you run a token at 192 lessons(32*6), the newbie would be better off buying 32 credits and converting them for the bonus and winding up with 272 lessons..
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
<50 what? Levels? You can hit L50 so fast that it would be useless.
Maybe have the elite give you non-tradeable elite coins, and each coin can be traded in for either X lessons or one tradeable token.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I'm generally inactive at the moment, but if the tokens went from the Iron Elite, I would be cancelling my subscription. Plenty of people who are much more involved with the game have made sensible points about re-balancing the problems that tokens create.
What I would like to know is, since they are going to remove Tokens, from Iron Elite, are they going to replace them with something else? If not, I may cancel my subscription. Why pay $24.99 a month for less than what we are getting now? Makes no sense to me.
So we will probably do some of the changes you guys have suggested, but we will not be forcing people to give up their shops. We will probably remove them from the token wares though.
Are you still planning to remove soulstones from token wares Nov 1? I want to know so I can cash out some of my tokens now while keeping some in reserve for the future changes.
Honestly, you should just remove soulstones from the game entirely. They feel so stupidly offensively cash-grabby in a farmville kind of way.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Or make them only apply to earning aspect XP and make it 4x multiplier (so its better than achievements). Your exp gain will still outpace your gold gain from bashing which the aspect perk system is based on and require the sale of credits/lots more bashing for gold/questing to make up the shortfall. It encourages the lazy to just say "ehhh, I'll sell 100 credits to fund that perk, rather than bash 8 more hours." Or it would me. Basically, don't make me do the thing I hate to get cool stuff all the time.
Comments
As mentioned I don't have a strong opinion on tokens in Elite. However, it's a rather airline-like decision to start taking away amenities from something without lowering the price. If the membership was dropped to $20 (well, $19.99) per month it might be a less bitter pill.
The RP didn't really exist, though.
Magick and Demonic were barred from entering AM places, and Demonic was also barred from entering Magick. Everybody in the world was auto-enemied from Stavenn as soon as they knew you existed because of the high amount of totally legitimate new characters, who were totally not alts, being used as raid points, and Stavenn's the one city that could have been accepting of everybody.
About the only cross-circle thing that was allowed was AM inside of Magick cities, and that was on its way out due to the "I'm not enemied, we should totally raid!" and AM's "Why are you in Kinsarmar! Heresy!" mindset.
Unwelcome was welcome if just for the removal of "nobody online can enemy, let's go abuse the system!" and pre-emptive enemy statuses it brought along with it, as well as the "Antioch is getting aggressive. Let's enemy every Antiochian who might raid!" stuff.
I know that I was personally so tired of that crap that I was pushing for more places to adopt the Stavennite pre-enemy method.
Also, something something something tokens.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I do think that you'd want to be careful trying to force a refund on people who have purchased them, paying with tokens or otherwise, as shopkeepers are about the most rabid group of people in the game.
** And don't try them now just see if they're really broken. **.
** Or credit conversion. Try not to do anything much right now. **.
** Don't panic, normal service will be restored as soon as possible. For now, enjoy the wonders of conversation. **.
*** We will be rebooting in about 60 seconds ***.
** Don't panic. Just...stay close to your rosaries **.
** Monetary offers for Salvation accepted. **.
I'd be okay with it, but it would be a bad idea.
People go nuts over their shops, even if you don't actually make any gold until you've cleared ~8,000,000+ in profit. Add another ~400k to that for every flask in the shop.
TBH, I'd be surprised if even a third of the market stalls have paid themselves off or even come close to it. The only reason to buy one anymore is to have a portable locked room.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
One problem I have with the elite is the way it scales up.
One big thing the Iron Elite is supposed to do is help new players catch up to the established players. Having it start at 100 and scale up to 150 is sort of crappy in that regard. It'll take you 3 months to learn a skill at the "new subscriber" rate, which is pretty bad for playing catchup.
Having the tokens>credits conversion made that a lot more bearable and reduced that time by a third, but it also basically turned tokens into free credits for people like me, which I can understand you guys disliking.
So how about changing the conversion from tokens>credits to tokens>lessons? Catching up becomes easier(or at least doesn't get any harder, depending on your conversion ratios), and tokens don't just turn into credits towards my next artifact. Everybody wins, because the big barrier to newbies in this game, imo, isn't credits. It's lessons.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
It's an admin-assigned value in a way, but it's a value that's useless to most of us.
Figure, that value is at 32 credits, roughly. Most of us would want to sell for 32cr or an equvalent amount of gold. However, if you run a token at 192 lessons(32*6), the newbie would be better off buying 32 credits and converting them for the bonus and winding up with 272 lessons..
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
<50 what? Levels? You can hit L50 so fast that it would be useless.
Maybe have the elite give you non-tradeable elite coins, and each coin can be traded in for either X lessons or one tradeable token.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Honestly, you should just remove soulstones from the game entirely. They feel so stupidly offensively cash-grabby in a farmville kind of way.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."