Time to money conversion using Obsidian Crowns.

**UPDATED for 5/28/16 patch that lowers NPC sell value to 250 gold**

1 Gold Crown = $0.85 to $1.00 (averaging roughly $0.91, because it's not a linear discount) depending on how many you buy at a time. It would be safe to average the price at $0.92 since I think many will opt for the "25 coins for $23 deal."

1 Gold Crown = 250 gold (g) in game (as of 05.28.16)

100g / day for a Row lot, so 1 Crown = 2.5 days of Row lot rent.

You grind out 1,000,000g? Congrats, you just did $3,680 worth of grinding.

Typical play session net you 6,000g in 4 hours? Congrats, you just earned $5.52 an hour. (1,500g /hour. 1500g is 6x, or 600% of a Gold Crown. 600% of $0.92 is $5.52.)

You like to grind gold and make 5000g per hour? Sweet. You just made roughly $18.40 an hour. Boss.

Just in case all the numbers I'm throwing out are making you cross eyed, just remember this.

Every 250 gold you make in game is currently worth $0.92 US dollars.

Use that information however you'd like.

 

Keep in mind that if you are selling the gold crown to the vendor, it's 1,250 G.

Also players may pay less or more for the gold crown depending on the supply and demand.

 

Ok, that changes things. Back to the mathing.

Edit: Updated for the 1250 gold per crown figures.

 

I can make $6K gold just farming mobs easily in 1 hour (bows)

 

That is approximately 120 mobs per hour estimating 50 gold per mob. That is without factoring in cost of repairs, resources (arrows, pots), travel time, upkeep, or selling.

120 mobs per hours is 2 per minute. Doable, but that's a pretty intense hour for a few bucks.

Sounds about right.

 

What Starman said.
Farming gold is pretty easy at low levels already.

 

All video games are skinner boxes. The key is maintain the facade that you're doing something willingly because you enjoy it, and not that you're performing an arbitrary task because you have to. Then the game becomes a chore. You realize that Tom Sawyer duped you into whitewashing his fence.

When you directly equate time to dollars, you bring down the important set dressing of what is a game.

Games ultimately need to be fun.

 

Once they re-balance the loot, we'll have to re-assess everything again. Better to just focus on making friends/connections while testing the game feature for now, I think.

 

The question becomes how much is your time worth? The typical $15 a month plan, in this case, is the equivalent of 16.3 Crowns, or 20,380g. That's 679g per day, which I think is far too low, even for a casual gamer. But, does that mean the Crowns should be worth more gold?

The person with disposable income would say yes.

 

Crowns should be worth very little to NPCs but valuable to players. That way, the game isn't generating more gold in a way that needs to be tightly controlled to prevent inflation. (NPCs creating gold based on out of game purchases). The in-game currency "value" of crowns can go up and down with the player economy, instead of being a constant that needs to be managed by Port itself. Let the in-game economy dictate the "exchange rate" instead of creating an artificial constant.

 

This isn't for devaluing play time, though I'm sure some will feel that way. It's part of the whole equation. It can't NOT be a factor in the Dev's determination of how much the coins should be worth.

In my opinion, the Crowns should cost more real money and be worth less in game gold. Now that Port has introduced a more-or-less direct $$ to gold conversion, in-game inflation will be a bear to manage. And that's not even to say what will happen on the Player Marketplace for "Crown to Cash" transactions.

 

Agreed. But we both know these type of transactions are more profitable since it is harder (for some) to recall how frequently they are spending a few dollars here and there. Port would be losing money with a $15 a month for a sub compared to this... Which makes me feel equal parts proud and icky for them.

 

Updated the numbers based on the recent (5/28/16) change to NPC resale value. Thanks for lowering it's in-game impact, @Chris .