Spiral Knights - Purchasing Permanent Trinket/Weapon Slots?

Purchasing Permanent Trinket/Weapon Slots?

10 replies [Last post]

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 12:55

Shani

Legacy Username

I personally find items that expire to be distasteful and would prefer non-expiring trinket or weapon slots. Rather than costing 150/250 per month, I'd find it much more preferable if there were an option that cost, say, 5000/8500 and were permanent, despite that only being a cheaper option after approximately 33 months of continuous play.

(Also as an aside, a purchasable expanded ME slot might not be a bad idea either; for an up-front investment, a casual player could stock up extra energy for playing on the weekends.)

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 14:33

Softspoken

Legacy Username

Perms yes, tank extensions no.

I'm pretty sure you're not going to get an expanded ME tank, useful as it would be. As it is, crafting forces most players to use CE in one way or another at 3*, and I'm betting that's by design. Right now 100 energy acts as a tidy barrier that a few aspects of the game are balanced around.

Permanent slots sound good, but I have to admit I think you're overpricing them. Really, something that wouldn't pay off until after a year, or maybe two, would probably be good enough. 2 & 3/4 years seems a bit excessive. But this is quibbling about the price, which is kind of secondary to the idea.

Permanent versions of temporary upgrades are often nice, even with the necessarily increased pricing.

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 14:42

Icee

Expanded mist for cash

As long as it costs real money only, not CE, I think an expanded mist tank purchase option is reasonable. I think if it is offered it should be a monthly/quarterly/yearly purchase and able to set up as a recurring payment (like a subscription), though, rather than permanent.

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 16:47

Shani

Legacy Username

Yeeeah, my prices were picked

Yeeeah, my prices were picked arbitrarily, other than "sure, sounds like a large number up front" thought.

My rationale for proposing an expanded mist tank is that daily players won't need it and a weekend player who doesn't want to waste 500ME during the week could pay up front to at least recapture a part of it. (Personally, once we're IN the game, I don't see a difference between CE and cash. After all, SOMEBODY had to buy the CE to begin with. I don't think OOO cares too much about who.) Having said that, I was under the impression that crafting used CE only. If it uses ME as well, that rather changes things. (I didn't think the mist tank idea out too much, I admit. =P)

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 17:08

xienwolf

Legacy Username

Allowing us to purchase a

Allowing us to purchase a larger Mist Tank with CE is a GREAT idea for casual players in my opinion.

Honestly, who other than a casual will ever have their tank go full? Hell, mine never breaks 50 because I log in randomly through the day and occasionally pop down for a quick couple of floors with friends, or I craft an item to try for a UV.

I imagine worst case scenario, some day I might manage to actually stay offline for a full 24 hours (very unlikely) and thus lose out on almost 10 energy (oh my!).

For me, and many like me, it would be a complete waste to buy an expanded mist tank. Only paying for itself when we go away for the weekend (without our laptops).

For casuals though, who only ever play on weekends, or at least rarely play 2 days in a row, expanding their mist tank would pay for itself within the first week or 2. They would enjoy the game FAR MORE with the extra boost to free access.

These are people who quite likely aren't thinking about hoarding CE, but rather just about getting new equipment. So they are spending all their money on new recipes, and almost never have a chance to actually build anything. These are people who cannot stay online for an extra hour or 2 just to sell materials for added income.

So yes. Let us purchase expanded Mist Tanks please. Lots of people who don't need it will buy them, wasting CE completely, but lots of people who might quit the game after getting to 3* gear would have reason to stick around, and hopefully get hooked enough to become more regular players and eventually paying customers.

Weapon Slots and Trinket slots I would also love to see us be allowed to purchase permanent unlocks for. But it needs to cost at LEAST 10x the temporary unlock price. If not for weapons, at least for trinkets. Unless you snag the +Life one, none are honestly worth the 150 a month.

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 20:05

RamuneDrink

Legacy Username

Permanent slots yes, ME tank

Permanent slots yes, ME tank increase no, unless it can be bought with CE.

Sun, 04/24/2011 - 06:53

sabriath

Legacy Username

Maybe

The perma slots are a given, that should be implemented (2 years should be good enough, 3600/6000, which amounts to $9.00/$14.99 -- but as Softspoken already stated, that's quibbling over a number).

As for the other...I'm a little torn with this suggestion. Although I see a great advantage with having ME extended for those who don't play as often, I also see it as a loss-of-income for 3R. At first glance, you see CE is equal to ME, and paying CE in order to extend ME would substantiate the loss, but not necessarily.

Imagine a player who only plays 1 day a week. Normally he would be limited to 100 ME during that one day, which would force him to purchase (either by crowns or money) more energy in order to continue. High-tier items also require more ME than 100, which forces the players to actually need to have purchased some form of CE (whether directly or indirectly), and this player is no exception. Now, this player decides to spend X amount of CE in order to extend his ME for the upcoming weekend to 400....which after 4 days it will be there. On the weekend, he now has the ability to craft some great stuff, sell it for a ridiculous amount of crowns, and then purchase CE from his profits (ME -> crowns -> CE). This will drive the market for CE up, while this guy gets to continue along his merry way redoing the whole cycle (making the casual gamer more powerful than the players who are on every day).

How would 3R have to remedy this so that the market isn't disrupted by an infinite loop variant? Simple, charge more CE than the ME gain....so in order to turn your 100 ME tank into a 200 ME tank, that costs at least 101 CE. Why would anyone in their right mind pay 101 CE for a 100 CE equivalent?

That one gets a no from me.

Sun, 04/24/2011 - 10:38

xienwolf

Legacy Username

sabriath: What on earth are

sabriath: What on earth are you talking about?!

A casual is going to take a couple of months before they are capable of getting a recipe that sells for decent crowns. And honestly, only nice UVs sell for any amount worth mentioning, especially since by the time a casual can make 5* gear, everyone will have full 5* who isn't casual. Nice UVs are not something you can reliably get, you have to produce DOZENS of items to get a single UV with fair regularity, and then it is typically weak/useless anyway. Only someone who is prepared to blow through 1,000 CE or more will have a chance to generate a nice UV for selling.

And we are talking about a single expansion, from 100 to 200. Absolutely more than enough for a casual player who only gets online every saturday for a couple of hours to deal with elevators, doors, and resurrections, with the ocasional crafting + Limited Dungeon Crawling when he finally gets to T2.

And my god man, we are talking about REMOVING temporary boosts. So why would we propose adding a temporary ME tank increase? Because if you only have to pay 101 CE to make your ME tank larger, then EVERYONE would do it unless they simply NEVER take a weekend away from the game. The increased ME tank would have to cost at least 1,000 CE, requiring the casual to admit that he wants to keep playing this game for a long time, and invest some money in the expansion (since he could just USE the 1,000 CE and have 2 months of extended weekend play time, or if he knows he will keep on playing ever weekend for longer than that, he can buy the expanded tank).

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 12:56

sabriath

Legacy Username

@xienwolf

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about right now....did you read my post or just skim it? There are other threads about CE and ME changes that I've posted in that dealt with the effects on 3R profits if it were implemented. I'm not going to debate this yet again, so I'll just say that increasing the ME tank will cause either a loss in profits to 3R, or have no point because of equality to other systems in place.

Mon, 05/02/2011 - 14:37

Tive

@sabriathyou misunderstood

@sabriath
you misunderstood the ME tank expand suggestion.

This isn't about buying ME, but about upping the cap the ME can accumulate in your ME tank. so while you'd still get only 100ME every 22 hours you could save up more by playing only every second day.

An example of how this could look like in practice is:
1) Casual A buys ME tank expansion for 500CE~1000CE
2) A can now save up up to 200 mist energy in his mist energy tank
3) A only plays at weekends and ends up breaking even after 5-10 weeks, compared to if he bought 100 CE every weekend to play more.
X) It's an alternative payment sceme someone who rarely plays can benefit from.

Or just reread the thread next time before wondering what's going on.

Tue, 05/03/2011 - 02:47

#10

sabriath

Legacy Username

@TiVVV34

Yet you are not understanding, like many others. You think "it's just energy that builds anyway, what will it change to buy extra space"...but considering most people don't look past their own noses, I don't blame you. If you give people an inch, they will take a mile....allowing players to build up to a 200 ME tank, allows for a slight exploitation over the 100 ME model that is in place.

Let me give you an example....I create 2 accounts. I pay for CE on the first account, which turns it into a pay account and allows the separation of ME tanks on my computer. This is already "exploited" in the game (3R pretty much knows a lot of people do this), so let's not quibble over that. Now, normally a person will need to come online every day in order to use up the "free" 100 ME on both of their accounts, but even with this ability, they are still limited to 100 PER account. If any recipe/feature requires more than 100 energy, than CE is required PER account.

Now, let's look at the ability to increase a tank to 200....now I decide to purchase this 200 ME tank on my "alternate" account and I get on it every other day instead of every day. This allows me 200 ME to craft with for _FREE_....so when I need to create a 300 energy item for my main account, I'd just simply wait for my odd day on my alternate, craft it with him (spending only 100 CE), send it to my main (100 crowns), and voila. This 1 item just lost 3R about 29 cents -- doesn't sound like much, but imagine 5 people doing it 3 times a week, that's $4.35 lost. And that's only 5 people....how many people do you think are playing? And that's just an example, there's many other exploits with this type of system that would increase profit loss to the company.

I'm a game theorist and economist, so in my own guess, I'd say that it would have to cost around $400 per month to get a 200 ME tank in order for 3R to break even with exploitation.

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Purchasing Permanent Trinket/Weapon Slots?