Scale ingame premium cost with skill points

[Kaldari 53]

This idea was in my mind a while ago (I don't see anything in a thread search, so no idea if it's been mentioned in the past) but came to the fore while chatting with a new player recently. They had been hired to make bricks and mortar for someone, which is fine. They were being paid the going rate, which is fine. But they were supplying the materials themselves, and barely had 19 masonry, so creation rate was abysmal. After four or five hours they had produced four hundred of a thousand mortar. With my 90 in digging and 70 in masonry I have a clear advantage in making stuff, but the bulk market is the only real option for new players to work in, so they have to work far longer to achieve the same result.

 

So I thought that rather than having new players run facefirst into the same paywall, give them a more gentle slope to wander up before they are faced with the 10 silver per month cost.

Do this by scaling the cost of buying premium with the number of skillpoints a character has. The exact figure, whether it's 1/2/5/10 copper per skillpoint depends on what the average number of skillpoints is, and where you want the player's growth to equal the full ten silver.

The key point is that early game premium is easier to obtain, but then becomes progressively harder.

 

People would undoubtedly create alts due to this. I for one would certainly be tempted to create a few to care for animals, but that is limited by deed ratio anyway, so it's not really changing anything. Alts for other purposes would still progressively cost more to maintain as they improved whatever skill they were created for. Farming affinities is already done, so  nothing new there, and we now have affinities from new foods.

 

 

Before someone jumps in and says that a couple of hours in a minimum wage job is enough to pay real money for premium, let me just point out that minimum wage is not the same in every country. 

Cuba, for one example: "Wages in Cuba increased to 687 CUP/Month in 2015 from 584 CUP/Month in 2014. Wages in Cuba averaged 494.38 CUP/Month from 2008 until 2015, reaching an all time high of 687.00 CUP/Month in 2015 and a record low of 415.00 CUP/Month in 2008."

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/cuba/wages

It takes 27.74 CUP to equal one Euro, so that's quite a chunk of someone's wages to spend on a game.

 

But there's nothing stopping someone from earning silver ingame, converting that into a legal currency, then using that to buy premium from the shop, because they've reached the point where that is actually the cheaper option.

Scaling the ingame cost would just give new players an easier start to Wurm life

[Wurmhole 3,650]

Rather interesting idea.  When I first saw this, I was thinking it was something that would make high skilled players explode, but I see the motive and it is a good one.  Unique to the subscription model for any game I have seen.  It really won't make a long term impact I think.  The devs made the game a lot more playable in the FTP model recently and at some point, people in Cuba (or wherever finances may be tight) will hit the 10s wall and have to pay or walk away.  Nobody ever plays for long when they know they can't reach the top of a game, or that they will eventually be unable to afford.

 

+1 for the interesting idea, but I doubt it would get used for anything but keeping a bunch of priest batteries prem at a fraction of the cost they are now.  I know it is what I would do.  In fact, I'd start farming batteries.

[Zekezor 3,188]

Yea lets punish people for leveling up in skills that arent all that usefull!

Lets also have 200 sermon alts, woooo~

 

-1.

[Pashka 707]

I'm not sure I agree with this and the use of the example of Cuba kind of makes me wonder about the entire suggestion.  If someone in Cuba can afford the internet on those wages, the price for the game is not going to be as big of an issue as they are saying.

[Legios 496]

2 hours ago, Zekezor said:

Yea lets punish people for leveling up in skills that arent all that usefull!

Lets also have 200 sermon alts, woooo~

 

-1.

He clearly stated that it would not exceed the going rate for a full membership, so I don't see how this would hurt anybody. When I first started the game I had no direction or motives to even go premium, but then I hit the characteristic cap and felt like I had to pay 16 dollars right off the bat just to continue after that it would of been nice to be eased into paying less, since the 1 month membership is just silly imo.

[Ecrir 887]

This sounds like a good idea, though you're going to want to add an exception for priests and put them at 10s by default. Else there will be a lot of abuse from established players using cheap priest alts as batteries.

 

A slight alternative could be to scale the premium cost with the amount of months someone has had premium. So first time buying premium (both with silver and euro) would be cheaper then the second time, and so on until it gets to the current cost. Perhaps instead of actually modifying the price, this could be in the form of extra premium time. So the first time you spend euro or 10s you get 2-3 months instead of just 1 month, then every time after that you get less and less until you only get 1 month.

[Pingpong 1,070]

Just something to throw in there, ramp up prem costs for *all* players or amend your OP. Why make the veteran players feel punished for having too many skills or having played too long? If the veteran players were getting the same or a lesser ramp up in prem starting at the low cost advocated they might be more open to it.

[Redd 4,281]

I feel this would open up a lot of exploitable options in both PvE and PvP.

 

-1

[Karidwen 51]

I do not see how this can be a good idea. Yes making those first 10s in game takes time with no skills. But if you can pay forbthe internet and have the time to play games, maybe you should be looking for a job instead? Also, for first sub you get a referal, which sells for 6,5S atm + 2S in bank. Thats 8,50S back for that effort, and with a bit of foraging luck you will have another month premium in no time.

[Soil 515]

20 hours ago, Zekezor said:

Yea lets punish people for leveling up in skills that arent all that usefull!

Lets also have 200 sermon alts, woooo~

 

-1.

This

also why incentivize older players to quit lol

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

Its a different take on reducing the paywall somewhat but its likely to cause a lot of anger among the established playerbase.  Personally I think the current wogic should be replaced by logic and skillcaps scrapped as a reward for a premium account.

 

-1 here

[JakeRivers 2,921]

-1

 

lame

[Reylaark 1,100]

On 1/2/2017 at 6:10 PM, Kaldari said:

Scaling the ingame cost would just give new players an easier start to Wurm life

 

A worthy cause!  Thanks for putting thought into it, wish more people did.

 

There's a lot to the game that you can't experience without premium.  Sailing, riding a horse, etc.  Those things are very cool features of Wurm, especially to new players I think.

 

Maybe offer a one time 2 week premium at 5s (or less) so first-timers can get the entire effect we all enjoy so much.

Could even require a certain amount of playtime, or skill, before the option is opened up for them.

 

Could that be exploited?  Maybe.  Shouldn't keep CC from doing whatever they feel might help retain new players though.

Post the potential exploit you can think of as an issue, and we'll brainstorm a solution.

[Soil 515]

3 hours ago, Reylaark said:

 

Maybe offer a one time 2 week premium at 5s (or less) so first-timers can get the entire effect we all enjoy so much.

Could even require a certain amount of playtime, or skill, before the option is opened up for them.

its called sell your referral like a normal person

[Reylaark 1,100]

50 minutes ago, Soil said:

its called sell your referral like a normal person

I'm not sure new players know about that ahead of time though.  They may have met people to explain that to them, but it's a bit convoluted.  The amount of thought process involved for the new person kind of precludes an impulse buy.

 

The referral would still be a great bonus when they've already had a taste through the shortened premium though.  Makes it that much more likely they'd buy into a month after those initial two weeks.  Glad you brought it up.

[Gawain 622]

-1

While it is a good idea many would abuse this to sell referrals or give themselves referrals 

[Fawkes 1,567]

Keep in mind that Wurm is one of very few games that allows you to buy premium with ingame currency at all. It's a privilege, not a right. Those of us who buy premium with real money are the ones keeping the game afloat, and enabling more people to avoid doing so will reduce the longevity of the game.

[Kaldari 53]

Some interesting comments.

Just to clarify, no one is being 'punished' for anything. For almost all existing players nothing is changing.

All this would do is give new players a brief taste of premium without having to pay real money for it.  It's one thing to see a premium player do stuff, it's quite another to actually experience it, and would likely help a person decide if Wurm is something they want to continue to play, as we all know that there is an ever increasing number of games available for our leisure time.

 

I'm firmly of the opinion that if someone isn't paying real money through the shop, then they aren't contributing to paying the bills. But the more people who are attracted to paying in the long term, the better.

 

On a side note, I mentioned Cuba as an example because I recently read an article which said that it wasn't unknown for tourists to find their taxi driver was a surgeon by day, who earned more as a driver than he did as a surgeon. You can all rest assured that there is no Communist plot to infiltrate Wurm (well, there might be, but I am certainly not part of it).

 

As pointed out, there's definitely potential for exploits.

So let's say:

- being a priest requires 'full' premium, as does gaining or losing affinities, that's those two nipped in the bud.

- the referral doesn't unlock until the player is paying the full price. So nothing is changing there.

- anything else anyone can think of

 

 

PingPong, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by " ramp up prem costs for *all* players or amend your OP. Why make the veteran players feel punished for having too many skills or having played too long?". If I changed the OP to ramping up all prem then wouldn't that be amending it? Or do you mean that I wasn't clear in stating that only ingame prem cost would be ramped?

But I'm going to say no, for several reasons.

- veteran players wouldn't be paying any more than they are now, and by the time they are 'veteran' they are long past the end of the ramp anyway.

- it would reintroduce all the potential exploits that are locked behind the full price

- real money premium is already cheap enough. I worked out my premium's local cost to be less than two pints of beer a month

[Pingpong 1,070]

I think I was just saying if the veterans were given 2 months (for example) of cheaper premium under this plan, they would probably be more in favor of it. To say to the veterans, "Tough,you've paid full price all this time and now we're giving others cheaper access." Well that just seemed a bit marginalizing.  I realize game companies do this kind of thing all the time but wurm is special in that we do have a little bit of voice here on the suggestion forums.

I think something like this plan might require that toons under 20ah or some kind of cap lose the ability to care for animals, otherwise it would be quite possible to have a mega farm of cared for animals on 1s alts that you never use again.

[Pashka 707]

All this would do is give new players a brief taste of premium without having to pay real money for it.  It's one thing to see a premium player do stuff, it's quite another to actually experience it, and would likely help a person decide if Wurm is something they want to continue to play, as we all know that there is an ever increasing number of games available for our leisure time.

 

By the time that someone plays for a few days, they know what they can do.  When premium you get a referral, I'm not sure how they would be able to stop that unless they made it from the shop only and I think more would be upset about that.  When a premium player loses premium, they now get to keep their characteristics.  This would make a few things very easy to only do once and then I can drive the boats etc without ever worrying again.  All of the things that are just out of the reach of non premiums are that way to give them a reason to buy premium.  A taste is what they get without having to pay or experience that.

 

I guess I do not understand why this is something that is needed.  Why someone cannot earn the silver for one month either in game or out of game.

[Kadore 926]

Do we have players from Cuba?

 

If things are that dire perhaps we can start a kickstarter for them so paying for Wurm is not such a challenge.

[Yiraia 427]

I like the purpose but not the approach  -1

I would rather a free activatable trial with restrictions such as being considered premium during a sermon, or collecting drops from uniques/rifts(for the same reason the above guy mentioned)