I voted "Yes, but I won't be making more in the future" and it said to elaborate. My reasons have nothing to do with the price or value of credits generally, just with my sense of what Lusternia wants to be, what Lusternia is, what Lusternia will be. I won't go any farther than that because everyone always just translates it into something else anyway.

^ omg griefer haven!!!

I personally haven't bought credits. I might buy some in the future, though, but generally I only spend if it's fun (hence my lack of combat artifacts but oodles of dolls and curios :blush: )

I think IRE's biggest problem is the way they market themselves, though. If one is to go to the IRE website, the title goes "Free Games|Iron Realms Entertainment". The truth is, while one might be tempted to think that the word "free" would make the games seem more attractive, it may actually be doing to opposite. It may make people think these games are small, tacky and lacking depth. If you go on the front page, you see some very unsatisfying descriptions of our favourite worlds.

Even some of the testimonials feel a little stiff and not entirely genuine.

If I were IRE, I'd first take the time to rework the site to better represent what we love about their games and what's so darned addicting and captivating about these worlds. Heck, they could do with a slightly fancier make-over too :P

But anyway, my entire point is that I feel like they aren't doing themselves justice with the way they're advertising themselves.

EDIT: Ah, I'm so slow I got sumo-ninja'd. This was aimed at Phred's points.

Lendren:

I voted "Yes, but I won't be making more in the future" and it said to elaborate. My reasons have nothing to do with the price or value of credits generally, just with my sense of what Lusternia wants to be, what Lusternia is, what Lusternia will be. I won't go any farther than that because everyone always just translates it into something else anyway.

That pretty much sums up my views.

There is definitely something else at a deeper level that could be done to get more people to sign up and stay, credits/artifacts/money being just one factor among them, and Phred nailed some pretty good points there too. For the sake of the poll though, what do you think about credits if you were enjoying Lusternia to its fullest and everything was going awesome and etc etc?

On to a different but related topic - @Riv Marketing is an issue, for sure. It's completely aimed at the wrong type of crowd. I agree that text games (can we stop calling these MUDs? It sounds especially nerdy) are a niche market, but I think we also pigeon hole ourselves a lot more than we need to. Games are games and people find games fun, text games being exceptional in that you can have meaningful interactions with people and build strong friendships and that is really, really amazing! (you interact with people in other games too but at a much more superficial level)

I used to buy every now and then, but I honestly haven't had the time to play like I used to. Also, college is being a douche to my checking account leaving me poor. Curse you, private school!

So... I don't buy credits anymore for obvious reasons but I've never really had too much of a problem with credit prices. As a player, sometimes I had thought "Man, x amount of dollars for

I have heard that rationale before and it is a compelling one. There's sense behind it.
But how many people from open beta are still here? (I am from closed beta... geez I'm old) Or how many people plan that far ahead into the future for their purchases? That kind of foresight (or perhaps hindsight!) is nice but I don't think it is something most people realize or consider heavily in the value of artifacts. You are just an outlier Zvoltz stop fiddling in my data =p

Open beta user here. I spent $20 once to make my character permanent, and the rest is earned in the game or through coding. If I'd paid money for all that stuff, I would have already gone through a very unpleasant divorce.

There is plenty of value in the virtual goods we enjoy here, but it's all subjective and different for each individual player.

I had considered prefacing that statement saying that it wasn't directed at any individuals here, and was just a general statement about consumers based on my experiences from dealing with customers in a sales position. Apparently I should have. Perhaps it was a bit tangential to the topic anyway.

Just because my own opinion differs (drastically) from some people's, that doesn't mean I am saying those opinions are invalid and don't matter. I mean really.

And I meant a finical investment that you would someday expect to see some possible returns on, not the personal investment you would have in the game from making multiple purchases from it. If purchased items were de-valued, it doesn't really have an effect on people who already purchased items besides them being upset that other people are going to spend less than them. And I guess something like that is bad for business? But again, I'm not really a business minded person. <_<

Xenthos:

Refunds are not out of the question; there is precedent, if they adjust artifact pricing, to do so.

There is also no precedent (nor do I think there would really be any major backlash) if lessons-per-credit were tweaked, as skills are a slightly different thing than artifacts on the whole. I personally don't care if such a change is made.

However, if IRE was to adjust credit quantities for monetary value on a significant level across all their games I would expect a significant backlash from established players from each one; not really a good business decision for a company! The best solution would be to look at what credits can buy and see if adjustments need to be made on a case-by-case basis. Deal with those, keep the customers who have already paid / continue to pay happy, and draw new customers in.

That would be the ideal avenue to pursue.

I once bought a TV at BestBuy. For 500$. A year later the same TV is still on sale, but now at 400$. Years later, it's still on sale and it's still 400$. The new market accepted value of this TV is 400$. If you can give me a legitimate argument that swindles BestBuy in to giving me the 100$ difference I will buy 100$ worth of credits and give you half of them, just for being able to prove this practice works in real-time. Otherwise, null.

I once bought a TV at BestBuy. For 500$. A year later the same TV is still on sale, but now at 400$. Years later, it's still on sale and it's still 400$. The new market accepted value of this TV is 400$. If you can give me a legitimate argument that swindles BestBuy in to giving me the 100$ difference I will buy 100$ worth of credits and give you half of them, just for being able to prove this practice works in real-time. Otherwise, null.

... how the heck is that null? Your argument is, from the ground up, a completely different scenario than that present in Lusternia.

You're taking a real-world technology industry, where production changes on a daily basis and new components are developed almost as fast. Older televisions have less demand, and their components are easier to produce, so their price goes down-- whereas a new television that takes its place may actually cost more. There's a constant lifecycle of new products taking over from old ones, of innovation and change driving forward. Heck, the real-life market is actually built around convincing you that your 1-year-old television is now junk and needs to be replaced with a brand-new one!

If you can give me a legitimate argument that has a static pricing scheme with no such market forces coming to bear on it being equal to a fluctuating scheme driven entirely by market forces, you might have a point-- but there isn't one. Unless, of course, your argument is that you feel credit prices should be fluctuating based on the stock market or some such (though that means they should be a whole lot higher right now, not lower).

You can't just arbitrarily change prices in a virtual world and say it's equivalent to real world-processes. At a fundamental level there is an infinite potential quantity of the virtual good...

I have bought credits in the past and would like to buy credits in the future, but do not currently do so due to a lack of disposible income brought on by high tuition costs. If I had more disposible income, I would buy more credits regardless of what IRE does with credit prices.

+1 What Iytha said.

I would buy credits again. Right now I've been broke for two months but I'm banking some extra cash and Lusternia is definitely on my priority list. I generally wait for a sale period to buy, unless I am making a character permanent.

On a side note, Lusternia is the first game that I have been willing to consider putting down a monthly subscription to. I hate games that require one, but for the enjoyment that Lusternia has brought, and continues to bring, it is more than worth it.

I've probably spent $400-$500 on lusternia, throughout the time that I played. That money went to sales that were 25% and up and lesson bonuses, because that's the only time they don't feel like a horrible rip-off (though they still kinda do). All of my arties and most of my skills are from guiding. If I could spend a reasonable amount of money and get another character playable, I'd probably do so every now and then. As it is, no way I'm going to spend $105 a skill set to get another character close to where Acrune is, and I certainly don't have time to invest in a character to earn everything IG or through guiding. So, thats one (of many) reasons that I'm not playing. When looking at the artifact prices, and converting them to real money, its pretty shocking to see. A cubix costs $600, $300 for a cameo, $20 for a permanent vial, and so on. Of course, these prices are assuming that you buy the lowest credit package that gets you the arty at non-sale prices, but even so, the prices are kind of nuts. But hey, if people buy them, its hard to say they should lower the prices.

I don't think I've ever seen the prices for credits go up in the 10 or so years I've been playing IRE games. During that period, inflation in Australia has been sitting between 2.5 and 4% so they've really been gettting cheaper every year! (not to mention favourable changes in x-rates )

Seriously though, IRE are pretty up-front about what people get for their money. If people have enough information to judge whether they want to buy credits and enough proceed to do so, the price is probably set correctly.

I probably wouldn't spend more if they were cheaper. I like saving up monthly credits from the Elite membership and sitting on a pile of potential. I did buy some crates in the recent sale because I love randomness and on average they're at least as good as buying credits (if lessons etc are useful to you).

Xenthos:

.,. Unless, of course, your argument is that you feel credit prices should be fluctuating based on the stock market or some such...

Essentially, they already are. I'd been thinking about getting the Iron Elite membership for a while, but what finally made me decide to do it was the fact that the American dollar dropped in price massively, So as an Australian I don't have to pay as much (It's varied from $20-25 per month since I started getting it). If the US dollar ever recovers I may have to reconsider my membership.

Edit: Just read Tully's post on the previous page. I don't know if I'd go for a "reverse elite" system, but the fact that the credits are bound is still limiting.

Mostly I've got the membership because I want to support the game (and can afford to), Similar to the reason I joined a union (Which I like to think of as a generous act with an obviously self-serving motive). I've got most of the cheap artefacts now, even though I could probably do without most of them, and the credits just kind of build up in my account until I can afford the mid-range artefacts. If they were regular credits I probably would have sold most of them, and I image others would do the same, which should theoretically drop the price in the credit market significantly.

Lehki:

It's not like IRE credits are some kind of investment for the future.

I don't see how you can view them any other way. You can't justify buying a $600 text-sword on its intrinsic merits. It needs the context of "this is a game I've played more than Skyrim, and will probably continue to" to seem reasonable or rational. It's an investment in past and future playtime. Or, alternately, it's an investment in an environment you enjoy, "This money keeps the game running so the community can continue to exist," sort of like donating to Wikipedia.