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Crystal Exchange
TL;DR:
[Exchange Crystal button in the game store opens an integer input field] Crystal -> 10k credits
[Exchange Credits] 50k credits -> 1 Crystal
Reverse exchange value could probably be a little lower since 50k's pretty steep but I digress I don't have numbers someone else can figure this shit out!
Solves the crystal exchange issue between characters It's just steep as hell thusly I don't think it'll see extensive use but hey it would be nice to have!
If someone wants to buy credits with cash it's roughly 100 bucks for 150mill before sales tax which sounds about right to me. (some folks have money to burn now they can burn it on credits yay!)
The main benefit that this is going to bring on is that it gives those who run multiple accounts something to do with all the crystal they accumulate; not much spacequake going on these days unfortunately because if there were those crystals would burn up really fast!
Biggest argument I can conjure up outside of making multiboxing even more powerful than it already is is the P2W argument; thankfully the size of one's wallet doesn't have any bearing on their capacity to splode other players so it's pretty fuckin' moot if you ask me.
Could also implement it in reverse for those poor F2P newbs that want to use something else than the EC107 all day but to earn GS some those sweet sweet greenbacks it should be steep as hell say 50k*crystal so the lazy F2P noobs who want to fly valks/skyproms without splodin' a few hive bots/mining some rare junk spend a few million credits for their fancy spaceboat.
All that said I figure the impacts on gameplay after implementing this to be negligible so honestly I can't give a shit either way.
[Exchange Crystal button in the game store opens an integer input field] Crystal -> 10k credits
[Exchange Credits] 50k credits -> 1 Crystal
Reverse exchange value could probably be a little lower since 50k's pretty steep but I digress I don't have numbers someone else can figure this shit out!
Solves the crystal exchange issue between characters It's just steep as hell thusly I don't think it'll see extensive use but hey it would be nice to have!
If someone wants to buy credits with cash it's roughly 100 bucks for 150mill before sales tax which sounds about right to me. (some folks have money to burn now they can burn it on credits yay!)
The main benefit that this is going to bring on is that it gives those who run multiple accounts something to do with all the crystal they accumulate; not much spacequake going on these days unfortunately because if there were those crystals would burn up really fast!
Biggest argument I can conjure up outside of making multiboxing even more powerful than it already is is the P2W argument; thankfully the size of one's wallet doesn't have any bearing on their capacity to splode other players so it's pretty fuckin' moot if you ask me.
Could also implement it in reverse for those poor F2P newbs that want to use something else than the EC107 all day but to earn GS some those sweet sweet greenbacks it should be steep as hell say 50k*crystal so the lazy F2P noobs who want to fly valks/skyproms without splodin' a few hive bots/mining some rare junk spend a few million credits for their fancy spaceboat.
All that said I figure the impacts on gameplay after implementing this to be negligible so honestly I can't give a shit either way.
[Exchange Credits] 50k credits -> 1 Crystal
The point of crystal is monetization, ie, generating revenue for Guild Software. If not for monetization of the Freemium model, it would not exist at all (as it didn't in the old days, and still doesn't for subscribers).
We need to carefully control the rate at which Crystal can be acquired, such that the rate allows some "Freemium" rate of currency acquisition, while offsetting the rate such that it's still advantageous to buy currency. This system is currently pretty out-of-balance on the "free" side, and hardly anyone has to ever buy Crystal, but that's still the idea and goal.
If we allow people to generate unlimited quantities of Credits and then convert it back into Crystal, that essentially means that we will reduce our revenue further.
Even if you placed some limits on it, you'd still greatly complicate the algorithm of determining Crystal value and managing the relative pay-vs-free monetization tradeoff across the userbase.
Given that our revenue is the point here, and the whole reason for Crystal existing, all of that would basically be counter-productive.
Biggest argument I can conjure up outside of making multiboxing even more powerful than it already is is the P2W argument; thankfully the size of one's wallet doesn't have any bearing on their capacity to splode other players so it's pretty moot if you ask me.
I don't disagree, but unfortunately, no one is asking either of us.
Basically, any system that allows the appearance of a P2W mechanic causes considerable blowback freemium-first communities. I've experienced this extensively.
The point of crystal is monetization, ie, generating revenue for Guild Software. If not for monetization of the Freemium model, it would not exist at all (as it didn't in the old days, and still doesn't for subscribers).
We need to carefully control the rate at which Crystal can be acquired, such that the rate allows some "Freemium" rate of currency acquisition, while offsetting the rate such that it's still advantageous to buy currency. This system is currently pretty out-of-balance on the "free" side, and hardly anyone has to ever buy Crystal, but that's still the idea and goal.
If we allow people to generate unlimited quantities of Credits and then convert it back into Crystal, that essentially means that we will reduce our revenue further.
Even if you placed some limits on it, you'd still greatly complicate the algorithm of determining Crystal value and managing the relative pay-vs-free monetization tradeoff across the userbase.
Given that our revenue is the point here, and the whole reason for Crystal existing, all of that would basically be counter-productive.
Biggest argument I can conjure up outside of making multiboxing even more powerful than it already is is the P2W argument; thankfully the size of one's wallet doesn't have any bearing on their capacity to splode other players so it's pretty moot if you ask me.
I don't disagree, but unfortunately, no one is asking either of us.
Basically, any system that allows the appearance of a P2W mechanic causes considerable blowback freemium-first communities. I've experienced this extensively.
Well I don't know the nature of your transaction fees, the credit > crystal exchange could get put behind a 50c~$1 one time crystal exchange permit, if that's the case the prohibitive rate of 50k credits > crystal could be lowered a bit.
the motivation behind the suggestion is mostly to give crystals a little bit more versatility; credits remain the main means of value exchange between characters all whilst making earned crystal that much more useful whilst hopefully creating an additional incentive to buy/earn crystal.
Starting another thread would be pretty silly at this rate; I doubt you'll find it interesting but it would be mighty cool if crystals could also be used to purchase lite subs/full subs albeit at a much more expensive crystal equivalent than purchasing the subscription outright; this would give an avenue to players outside the country that don't have the means to use paypay or get their hands on a bank card that won't charge the end user out the ass. (paypal sucks I tell ya!)
Either that or you oughta put more liveries like the fire-wasp ingame!
There isn't much to deliberate here as far as how it could/should be implemented since it's your rent money we're talking about here. :P
"Basically, any system that allows the appearance of a P2W mechanic causes considerable blowback freemium-first communities. I've experienced this extensively." - Sell more spaceboat skins damnit; also where's my corvus branded tricorne (and/or GS/VO mug); I'll spend the price of a steak dinner on one of those no questions!
the motivation behind the suggestion is mostly to give crystals a little bit more versatility; credits remain the main means of value exchange between characters all whilst making earned crystal that much more useful whilst hopefully creating an additional incentive to buy/earn crystal.
Starting another thread would be pretty silly at this rate; I doubt you'll find it interesting but it would be mighty cool if crystals could also be used to purchase lite subs/full subs albeit at a much more expensive crystal equivalent than purchasing the subscription outright; this would give an avenue to players outside the country that don't have the means to use paypay or get their hands on a bank card that won't charge the end user out the ass. (paypal sucks I tell ya!)
Either that or you oughta put more liveries like the fire-wasp ingame!
There isn't much to deliberate here as far as how it could/should be implemented since it's your rent money we're talking about here. :P
"Basically, any system that allows the appearance of a P2W mechanic causes considerable blowback freemium-first communities. I've experienced this extensively." - Sell more spaceboat skins damnit; also where's my corvus branded tricorne (and/or GS/VO mug); I'll spend the price of a steak dinner on one of those no questions!
Nother thing, this would without a doubt in my head piss off parts of the community but selling the TTM for ~$150 really oughta be something to consider if you need/want additional income.
Despite the strong case against the P2W factor given how optimized capship building has gotten the argument loses a lot of it's weight, it made sense 5 years ago type of deal but not so much these days, since a well organized player who has access/assistance to/from a cap pilot can shit out a Goliath after a couple weeks(and I'm being generous here). Capship proliferation facilitates more capships and the game's well past the "every player who wants a capship has one" phase which makes discarding whatever arguments folks would conjure against it pretty easy.
VO stands in a world of it's own as far as F2P mmo's are concerned odds are you want to keep it that way but I wouldn't fault you for following modern market currents; it's unfortunately the way shit works these days and it's a damn shame but don't go shooting yourself in the foot financially for the sake of how things should be.
Despite the strong case against the P2W factor given how optimized capship building has gotten the argument loses a lot of it's weight, it made sense 5 years ago type of deal but not so much these days, since a well organized player who has access/assistance to/from a cap pilot can shit out a Goliath after a couple weeks(and I'm being generous here). Capship proliferation facilitates more capships and the game's well past the "every player who wants a capship has one" phase which makes discarding whatever arguments folks would conjure against it pretty easy.
VO stands in a world of it's own as far as F2P mmo's are concerned odds are you want to keep it that way but I wouldn't fault you for following modern market currents; it's unfortunately the way shit works these days and it's a damn shame but don't go shooting yourself in the foot financially for the sake of how things should be.
the motivation behind the suggestion is mostly to give crystals a little bit more versatility
I understand the motivation from a player-perspective. But, it runs contrary to the motivation of having Crystals at all, from a developer perspective.
Adding an "exchange rate" to a system, alone, adds significant complexity to the calculation of "player currency acquisition cost". This also results in potential exposure to future credit/economy exploits (which are practically certain to happen), as well as "wealthy" players who have massive credit stockpiles. All of this is unhelpful.
it would be mighty cool if crystals could also be used to purchase lite subs/full subs albeit at a much more expensive crystal equivalent than purchasing the subscription outright
Yeah, EVE and a number of other games have systems like that, I'm aware of the possibility. It would be interesting, but it's another set of monetization mechanics that require careful balance, to avoid doing monetary harm to the company.
I'm not against this, it's just.. not top-of-mind right this minute.
Either that or you oughta put more liveries like the fire-wasp ingame!
We've been working on this for a long time. The problem is that the current implementation won't scale very well to having really large quantities of optional skins. We need a different system. But, more efficient systems require changes to the game engine and art-asset pipeline, which is another project that is currently underway, but is also a pretty non-trivial thing to take on.
Nother thing, this would without a doubt in my head piss off parts of the community but selling the TTM for ~$150 really oughta be something to consider if you need/want additional income.
It's unlikely that we'll ever sell "fully-permanent" capships directly. However, I've mentioned many times before that we'll likely sell access to temporary capships that have no Insurance (you lose it, it's gone) and that last only for a limited time. Essentially like a "capship rental". Doing so doesn't undermine those who choose to spend the effort to acquire the real-deal, and has greater potential for long-term revenue, as the ships are ephemeral.
Despite the strong case against the P2W factor given how optimized capship building has gotten the argument loses a lot of it's weight, it made sense 5 years ago type of deal but not so much these days
Basically any argument like this is only relevant within the current picture of the game. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't approach the game from the standpoint of "things have been this way for a long time", I mainly look at where I want to go. Watching players become highly efficient in capship generation has been interesting and useful. But, notably, we only have two player capships, at present, and no variants at all.
(For other readers: This lack of variants has, historically, been because of a lack of next-gen gameplay for which capships were really intended, fragility of the older economy, and that the systems the "Type S" and such were expected to be based around ended up not working correctly and needed to be heavily re-written, with a large associated dev timesink).
While I am not in favor of reducing or seriously nerfing existing capship capabilities, that does not rule out new capabilities, which are exclusive to new capship variants, with these features becoming highly desirable and relevant with expansions in gameplay. Construction of such variants could well hinge on different ores and minerals that have not been stockpiled to great extents, and the abilities of highly automated players and multiboxers could similarly be limited by upcoming changes in mining mechanics.
And again, I'm not interested in making anything impossible to acquire ("Planet Cracker" notwithstanding), I do want a balance of content that's built on a base of systems that are not easily subverted by what I'll call "extreme player strategies" around scale. I definitely like player-economies and player-to-player trade of goods related to endgame construction, that's cool; but it shouldn't completely subvert all existence of endgame goals, or at least it should have some potential controls available to the designer for some situations.
Plus, an additional effect of such a balance would also increase the value of the "capship rental system" mentioned above, since acquisition of capships would be more normalized to a known level of difficulty, more easily predicted by the game's designer and more likely to continue at the same difficulty over time. This could then result in additional rental-related sinks and potential monetization.
VO stands in a world of it's own as far as F2P mmo's are concerned odds are you want to keep it that way but I wouldn't fault you for following modern market currents; it's unfortunately the way shit works these days and it's a damn shame but don't go shooting yourself in the foot financially for the sake of how things should be.
Thanks, we're okay for the moment. I've been pretty thoughtful in how I approached a lot of this, going back many years. Big development requires long-term time investments, which then results in periods of lengthy lulls in "obvious development" (like, the one happening lately). It's tougher to manage in a LiveOps setting, and some things ended up becoming a lot worse than expected (community management), but I think our long-term trajectory is still pretty good.
I'm not against more complex Freemium monetization strategies, and those will appear in due course. But, while the simple solution is always just "charge for all the things!", that results in a "game feel" that doesn't promote long-term personal investment.
Managing the balance of "game feel" and "monetization" is one of the hardest things to do in game development. It's also, frankly, one of my least-favorite things to do (I would rather charge a flat rate and just make a fun game), but the world is what it is these days.
I understand the motivation from a player-perspective. But, it runs contrary to the motivation of having Crystals at all, from a developer perspective.
Adding an "exchange rate" to a system, alone, adds significant complexity to the calculation of "player currency acquisition cost". This also results in potential exposure to future credit/economy exploits (which are practically certain to happen), as well as "wealthy" players who have massive credit stockpiles. All of this is unhelpful.
it would be mighty cool if crystals could also be used to purchase lite subs/full subs albeit at a much more expensive crystal equivalent than purchasing the subscription outright
Yeah, EVE and a number of other games have systems like that, I'm aware of the possibility. It would be interesting, but it's another set of monetization mechanics that require careful balance, to avoid doing monetary harm to the company.
I'm not against this, it's just.. not top-of-mind right this minute.
Either that or you oughta put more liveries like the fire-wasp ingame!
We've been working on this for a long time. The problem is that the current implementation won't scale very well to having really large quantities of optional skins. We need a different system. But, more efficient systems require changes to the game engine and art-asset pipeline, which is another project that is currently underway, but is also a pretty non-trivial thing to take on.
Nother thing, this would without a doubt in my head piss off parts of the community but selling the TTM for ~$150 really oughta be something to consider if you need/want additional income.
It's unlikely that we'll ever sell "fully-permanent" capships directly. However, I've mentioned many times before that we'll likely sell access to temporary capships that have no Insurance (you lose it, it's gone) and that last only for a limited time. Essentially like a "capship rental". Doing so doesn't undermine those who choose to spend the effort to acquire the real-deal, and has greater potential for long-term revenue, as the ships are ephemeral.
Despite the strong case against the P2W factor given how optimized capship building has gotten the argument loses a lot of it's weight, it made sense 5 years ago type of deal but not so much these days
Basically any argument like this is only relevant within the current picture of the game. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't approach the game from the standpoint of "things have been this way for a long time", I mainly look at where I want to go. Watching players become highly efficient in capship generation has been interesting and useful. But, notably, we only have two player capships, at present, and no variants at all.
(For other readers: This lack of variants has, historically, been because of a lack of next-gen gameplay for which capships were really intended, fragility of the older economy, and that the systems the "Type S" and such were expected to be based around ended up not working correctly and needed to be heavily re-written, with a large associated dev timesink).
While I am not in favor of reducing or seriously nerfing existing capship capabilities, that does not rule out new capabilities, which are exclusive to new capship variants, with these features becoming highly desirable and relevant with expansions in gameplay. Construction of such variants could well hinge on different ores and minerals that have not been stockpiled to great extents, and the abilities of highly automated players and multiboxers could similarly be limited by upcoming changes in mining mechanics.
And again, I'm not interested in making anything impossible to acquire ("Planet Cracker" notwithstanding), I do want a balance of content that's built on a base of systems that are not easily subverted by what I'll call "extreme player strategies" around scale. I definitely like player-economies and player-to-player trade of goods related to endgame construction, that's cool; but it shouldn't completely subvert all existence of endgame goals, or at least it should have some potential controls available to the designer for some situations.
Plus, an additional effect of such a balance would also increase the value of the "capship rental system" mentioned above, since acquisition of capships would be more normalized to a known level of difficulty, more easily predicted by the game's designer and more likely to continue at the same difficulty over time. This could then result in additional rental-related sinks and potential monetization.
VO stands in a world of it's own as far as F2P mmo's are concerned odds are you want to keep it that way but I wouldn't fault you for following modern market currents; it's unfortunately the way shit works these days and it's a damn shame but don't go shooting yourself in the foot financially for the sake of how things should be.
Thanks, we're okay for the moment. I've been pretty thoughtful in how I approached a lot of this, going back many years. Big development requires long-term time investments, which then results in periods of lengthy lulls in "obvious development" (like, the one happening lately). It's tougher to manage in a LiveOps setting, and some things ended up becoming a lot worse than expected (community management), but I think our long-term trajectory is still pretty good.
I'm not against more complex Freemium monetization strategies, and those will appear in due course. But, while the simple solution is always just "charge for all the things!", that results in a "game feel" that doesn't promote long-term personal investment.
Managing the balance of "game feel" and "monetization" is one of the hardest things to do in game development. It's also, frankly, one of my least-favorite things to do (I would rather charge a flat rate and just make a fun game), but the world is what it is these days.