Friday with Means - February 6th, 2009

[Omutb]

You know, as a funny side note, due to the way FC adds VAT to the subscription cost, the US dollah would have to be 15% more expensive than the euro for Ameericans to even start paying more than we do.

The VAT is added to the cost of all online sales within europe, and no sane business wants to cut 15% off their income just to counter act VAT being added.

[mawu]

Then be poor and use the old perk reset system, or farm credits some other way.

The point being made was, there's plenty of ways to earn credits, from the easy to the difficult, so it doesn't matter even if you have a gimp toon, you can still get credits if you want them.

Why would I? The fee will be modest. The point beeing made was you can argue all day about how it should cost 10s of millions. It wont.

[Swordbreaker]

The VAT is added to the cost of all online sales within europe, and no sane business wants to cut 15% off their income just to counter act VAT being added.

It still doesn't change the fact that by just being European you instantly pay 15% on the top of your AO subscription, thus making it so that the US dollar would have to be 15% more expensive than the euro to reach the same amount of money used by Europeans. Hell, in the case of AO, even if you're not in the EU (and as such, might not even have a VAT equivalent of any kind). And AFAIK, there's a good number of MMOs which DO contain the VAT in the subscription fee, not on top of it.

And my question still stands. Is the current system which would force people with cheap SL subscription to upgrade to full subscription for JUST the booster intentional, or just some kind of an oversight? It's just a booster after all, not an expansion set, and it's not like you're gonna get AI and LE for just buying the booster...

[Hacre]

Why would I? The fee will be modest. The point beeing made was you can argue all day about how it should cost 10s of millions. It wont.

It doesn't continue to be modest. It scales the more you use it.

[trousers]

It's because we live close enough to burn down the datacenter if they don't fix the lag.

So they bribe us.

It would be the Crossing of the Delaware all over again!

[macattack]

VAT is money FC has to give up anyway.. so FC sees no benifit from it don't blame FC (or us US folk for EU econimic decisions . As far as labeling "americans" as getting off cheap.. what about people in the middle east? china? australia? what currency do they submit too? or is it based on CC HQ?

[slashownz]

I am interested in profession balance, can almost say exclusively.
Since I play only one TL7 toon that is somewhere on the bottom of the food chain, and booster doesnt provide any content for lower TLs, I am not going to get it until I know exactly what it gives me personally for my money.
You can say I got burnt on LE, going to be more careful now.

You don't like perks?

VAT is money FC has to give up anyway.. so FC sees no benifit from it don't blame FC (or us US folk for EU econimic decisions . As far as labeling "americans" as getting off cheap.. what about people in the middle east? china? australia? what currency do they submit too? or is it based on CC HQ?

$50 Australian only gets me 2 months playing time. That's under the US payment scheme. It would cost $54 and change to pay for 3 months. That said, I have nfi what you guys are talking about

[Kaylinne]

You don't like perks?

What perks have to do with booster?

[irmo]

its lunchtime, its friday.... start typing means!

[Mikenche]

Bots. Up to 450m atm on RK2 in the case of supple, 70-200 for the rest. This was down as low as 330m just three months ago, and will get that low again not too long after instanced cities, assuming of course they are a source of lead viral bots. Probably wont go a hell of a lot lower. There will always be strong enough demand to keep them up 300+.

It takes luck to get bots. I don't know if it's true, but it certainly feels like some cities have lower droprate on them than others. I have done a few (around 5-7 I think) farm raids in my org's city and not a single leadbot has dropped. That's around 3 hours of time wasted for nothing, and doing that many raids in a single go would need 12 hours due to the wait times.

DB Infusers. 25m a pop, in a few hours a player will probably end up with 4 of them.

If you manage to get a good team. Doc+solja+crat can get around 2 infusers each, but if you happen to be one of the less desirable profs? Or just playing at the wrong time? This too can result in hours of wasted time just as well as fast profit.

TNH symbiants. If its worth bidding on, its probably worth 100m at least.

Raids only happen during your own side's week, and there's at least six hours between them, often more. If your playtime is limited due to school, work or other things, you may have a hard time attending to a raid. Also it isn't trivial knowing which symbs are worth a lot, and the 100m+ ones need accumulating points from several raids.

From these three examples, a casual player on a mission to make money (from other players), can come up with 100m+ in just a few hours of play.

Now, I'm not saying your examples are bad ways of making money, because they are good if certain conditions are met. They just aren't activities any 220 player can engage in at any time and be certain that he'll be 100m richer in two hours.

I have lately been making money from pokemon symbiants, in part because I have collected a large supply of patterns over time. Some pokemons are more luck-dependent in their drops than others, but that can be mitigated somewhat by either farming a variety of pokemons or knowing which ones to farm.

RK dynabosses can drop phats too, but finding the higher level ones up is rather chancy, as well as getting the good phats.

And then there's of course RK missions, which give on the order of 10mil per hour (eprhaps more, it's been a while since I last farmed credits from them), with nearly zero risk.

[Stick]

I have to disagree on that, actually it is complicated..

rubbish, and you and I already had this convo not once but twice iirc.
and how's this for a brainstorming:
AO pricing
1 month - 15 $ / 15 EUR + VAT
AoC pricing
1 month - 15 $ / 15 EUR VAT included.

and strangely enough, FC is the developer for both games.

[Demoder]

Perk Reset timers:
When I said "Modest fee"
(snip)
The old "free" system will also not be removed. I don't see how this can be a losing proposition.

So:
First use: 10 000 Credits
2nd: 100 000 Credits
3rd: 500 000 Credits
4th: 1 000 000 Credits
5th: 10 000 000 Credits
6th: 50 000 000 Credits
7th: 100 000 000 Credits
8th: 500 000 000 Credits
9th: 500 000 000 Credits
(snip)

I think that number of perks should be factored in, so that a lvl 20 won't have to pay as much as a lvl 220 per full perk reset. How about a formula that takes 7.5k per perk that can be reset (level dependant), times (1+(NumberOfResets+1)^2.5)?
Formula:
x= Number of perks
y= Number of resets (current reset included -- logically: old number of resets + 1)
Cost = (x*7500)*(1+((y+1))^2.5)

This would produce something like this for a level 220 with 40 SL perks and 30 AI perks:
Cost = (x*7500)*(1+((y+1))^2.5) where x=40+30 and y is specified
1st time: 3 494 848
3rd time: 17 325 000
5th time: 46 820 356
8th time: 128 100 000
10th time: 211 213 589

And something like this for a lvl 60 (6 SL perks, 6 AI perks):
Cost = (x*7500)*(1+((y+1))^2.5) where x=6+6 and y is specified
1st time: 599 117
3rd time: 2 970 000
5th time: 8 026 347
8th time: 21 960 000
10th time: 36 208 044

Where should this NPC be? Ideas?

I'd say it would be cool if this was a service provided by ICC (RP perspective: would explain how all sides got access to the technology at the same time (through ICC))
Besides, it would allow for having a friendly NPC in the ICC HQ, which is easily reachable through wompahs from the major Clan, Omni and Neutral cities.

[egadsrk2]

Blahblah

Oh but it needs luck and stuff you say. Gee man. No ****.

Two of the three activities are on demand, solo or in a team, and you can always find people up for it because Infusers are becomming a lot like currency, just like CRU was in its hay day. As for TNH, instancing will remove these weeks, and its just around the corner. Could be a long corner, but theres only one corner in the way. Its also something that requires exactly zero skill. Until you screw up, noone is turned away from a point raid. Three raids is enough to have a shot at something sellable.

If a player has the drive to make 100m, they can go on lft, and have it in just a few hours starting from 0. Actually yapping about the methods is pretty damn silly. I was offering 3 simple examples as to how it really is, in case from a developer point of view they have a different idea on how it all goes down.

[ninor]

I#d like to see IP reset cost depending on lvl, eg. the numbers of perks to be reset.

Also think that 500m is way too high as cap. 50 mil maybe, yes, but not much more.

ICC seems to be a possiblity, but how about some yutto medicine man =) Some mumbo jumbo...

[Chaoticshade]

You will not be able to delete your nanos...but now you will be able to HIDE the ones you don't wish to see in your interface.

i came!!!

any1 have a tissue?

[Solsssss]

You will not be able to delete your nanos...but now you will be able to HIDE the ones you don't wish to see in your interface.

i came!!!

any1 have a tissue?

*hands shade a bounty tissue(or did they change their name due to copyright law with a chocolate bar?)*

[bungerman]

You will not be able to delete your nanos...but now you will be able to HIDE the ones you don't wish to see in your interface.

i came!!!

any1 have a tissue?

use your soaked cloak of dishonour, but I'm starting to wonder what it's soaked with...