1. Here you will find official announcements and updates. These announcements are also linked in the Official SotA Discord server.
    We encourage comments from the community! To keep the announcements official, we ask that comment threads be created in the General forums for player input.

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Store & Crowns: Please read about important upcoming changes!

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Feb 13, 2019.

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  1. Forum Name

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    Edit - redacted. There’s no point- just keep doing you.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2019
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  2. Drilikath

    Drilikath Avatar

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    They know more then we do is all the answer ever is. They blamed a few loud mouth players for all the problems they have financially. Wiped out all post that said some words, and also tell us we are all wrong no matter what. design wise we can all keep making the game better but when it comes to money. We all have 0 clue what we are talking about.

    Multiple transactions your right people have no problem making 1-10 $1-$5 purchase. Throughout the month because they where buying a specific item. now if i wanted to buy that same item i am going to lose $$ by getting a $10 package ontop of a $9 subscription because you need crowns to do everything, so thats still 2 transactions already. then if i need say 1k crowns thats 10 $100 purchase. But because the numbers are so much higher, the simple same FEE that is applied it just gets hidden in the larger amounts right?
     
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  3. Forum Name

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    It’s funny because they moved store prices down to 50% off all the time, and hey, sales went up (at least judging by more money than usual has been raised the past few months). Economics at work!

    And now they want to raise the minimum purchase point of entry 100% or more. I am kind of excited to see this implemented from a financial experiment point of view; for the health of the game not so much.
     
  4. Terrence Phillip

    Terrence Phillip Avatar

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    All other F2P MMO's use Sota s upcoming store model. I m with them here, it s better for the game, and makes more sense. Don t forget you don t only get the COTO s and other bonuses with the subscription, but also get all stretch goals. That s a of a lot more than what you get for the same price in most other mmos.
     
  5. Jason_M

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    I don't quite understand the vitriol here. Your transactions will different. Things change.

    Those wee things you buy for cosmetics will be bought in game with COTOs.

    The COTOs you buy will be bought from the store.

    I do understand and appreciate that the more "micro" a "microtransaction" is, the mlre frequently it will be made. But small transactions are alwaya less profitable and there be new employees to be hired.

    Stiff upper lip, comrades. It's a small but potentially very effective change. Alter your routines accordingly and get with the new program.
     
  6. Forum Name

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    This change doesn’t affect current bigger spenders; that isn’t the point, nor is moving to an in game store an issue.

    This will affect people who like to nibble a few dollars at a time but aren’t so keen to shell out $10 at a time. It is throwing away that market.

    I go to 7-11 sometimes a buy a $1.50 slurpee when picking up other things. Why? It’s only a buck fifty so I don’t even think about it. But if 7-11 made me buy a $10 coupon book to get those slurpees, I would not do it. Why? I don’t want to have to buy $10 of slurpees at one time- it makes me think about it even if the price of a slurpee didn’t change.

    That is how f2p small transactions work. If what Chris is really saying is there are no small f2p purchasers in SotA or that market is not worth it, I’d say we are in heaps of trouble. That is the future of growing this game; we aren’t getting many more new big spenders. That’s why this proposed direction is causing discussion.
     
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  7. oplek

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    I'm not seeing much vitriol here, unless there's invisible people posting, who I can't see. I see people trying to explain why raising the barrier to entry might backfire.

    "It's to raise money to hire more devs and a marketing campaign"

    Not if they make less money because of it.

    "It's only $4"

    If I've budgeted myself $50 a month on entertainment that I use here and there, such as a movie... and suddenly one of those things gets more expensive. Guess which gets cut?

    "It's because people make 4-5 small individual purchases through the course of a month"

    Yes, and when you make them combine them all into one lump sum, you're much more likely to get "oh wait, I'm spending that much!?", and you've potentially lost the entire sale. Also, there are other ways of getting around this, like heavily promoting bundles of COTOs, which they're doing to some degree, but this could be stressed in the process further.

    "People can buy $10 every other month instead of $5 a month"

    That puts the lesser spenders (who we apparently don't care about) in the position of having to gamble when these hit-or-miss telethon rewards will be worth going in for.

    There's also those of us who don't believe $5 for 4 COTOs is a good deal. There are those of us who think that the pricing on digit assets within this game as been nothing short of insane. The rewards sweeten that pot. Otherwise, you fail to convert us to payers.

    "The rewards are being farmed for RMT"

    So wait... *now* we're worried about RMT? I thought that wasn't going to be policed.

    "The rewards aren't rare enough"

    Maybe this should have thought about before we started adding new rewards month after consecutive month? This is something I've brought up separately. Why not just let the people get their stuff? I never get the rewards for RMT purposes. Maybe this and the above would cancel each other out? If people spent $5 on 20 accounts, and don't sell the stuff... that's on them. And guess what, you got money for being able to infinitely stamp out non-tangible goods!


    But at this point, this is just getting repetitive. What more is there to say?

     
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  8. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    So your total at 7-11 is more than $1.50 as you picked up other things too at the same time. Like $9 or even $10.

    I think if people put all their items in the add on store cart and made one purchase ( the add on store has this cart capability already and I have used it in the past) I don’t Think the $5 Coto tier would of been discontinued.
     
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  9. Forum Name

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    Nope. *whoosh*
     
  10. Floors

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    There is always over reaction in the forums whenever any change is made. This is just people's nature and we need to not take it so seriously.

    I for one have complained about a few things that ultimately turned out to be good ideas, and I think this one will be too. 1 crown is 1 penny now, 100 crowns == 1 dollar roughly.

    As long as the there's no problems with the release that is ! like stuff doesn't get updated correctly.
     
  11. Barugon

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    This is absolutely false.
     
  12. Alleine Dragonfyre

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    @Chris and @DarkStarr I know this is a scary transition. I think its a good one, however, and support you. Microtransaction shop for vanity-only is fair and practical and I think you will make a lot more money and attract a much wider playerbase doing so.
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2019
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  13. Helvig Ingvildsdottir

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    I can't find the answer to a question I have (might be hidden somewhere in this thread, please bear with me): Will the individual pieces of sets and patterns sets go into the crown shop eventually? I am missing that! For me, that was the best part about the in-game crown merchants. If I needed one three story juniper tree, I could pick that up for just one crown, instead of buying a set of six trees at $5, of which I do not want or need five. I could get one elven archer hood pattern, of which I did not need six, and since the rest of the elven archer armor did not interest me, I only bought what I really wanted. Same with the elven mage leggings. Especially with the crown value being adapted to allow more precise pricing, these kind of items should be very very interesting to people. Hope they become available again!
     
  14. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    I look forward to the changes -- thanks @Chris !

    I especially look forward to the new lower pricing for the actual items which will far exceed any price changes to the COTO's themselves. Let me think on this... COTOs a tad more expensive. Things we buy with COTO's a lot less expensive. Hmmmm. Ya... I like that deal. Port rocks. Simply put.

    FYI, I looked at other games and their premium currencies have very similar scales. No surprises there. And since the scale really just reflects what ambiguous intangible items you can buy at varied prices, isn't actually the items COTO price just as important than the actual amount of COTO's we get per transaction? This aspect seems to be eluding many.

    They've said the 50% off prices are going to be very close, if not exact to the standard price for many of the items on the store going forward. And this new COTO scale in no way comes close to a 50% increase in cost for COTO's, so I'm failing to see how we lose here. One, I recommend budgeting and buy your COTO's in bulk once every X # of months if you have the ability to do so, so you'll get more COTO's for your dollar. Second, wait for items to go on sale, and spend those COTO's to get the most value for your COTO. And thirdly? If you can get COTO's now and budget your use of them over the coming months, this rate is soon to expire. Take advantage of it ;)

    In any case, I can't wait to find the new penny COTO's to drop 100x more often than the old dollar COTO's. That makes my mind tingle.

    EDIT: OH! And one more thing. I particularly love the fact that their maintenance of a COTO store is a huge time saver for them as opposed to maintaining the web-store version. I wonder what additional wondrous thingamajigs might be coming our way with that freed up dev time? ;)
     
  15. DarkStarr

    DarkStarr Executive Producer SOTA Developer

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    Thank you everyone for your feedback. We will definitely consider the strong reactions that this is provoking in a certain segment of users. We are locking this thread as the conversation is running in circles.
     
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