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Entropy

Gold membership

Gold membership  

507 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you agree with this idea?

    • Yes (won't buy though).
      105
    • No.
      130
    • Yes, and I will buy one.
      246
    • I don't care.
      31
  2. 2. What benefits do you want for it?

    • None (voted no)
      129
    • Higher chance to make rare items.
      229
    • More experience.
      244
    • Different color name.
      170
    • Better chance to get rare stones while harvesting.
      248
    • Less item breaks.
      222


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just ban GC farming, it wouldnt be hard to spot the player randomly giving away millions of gc

 

two tier system allready exists watch people who spend $$ on EL rocket through levels , as wizzy pointed out earlier.

 

this wouldnt stop but hey they would also get extra $$ benefits to, which then makes EL a three tier game

 

its a huge change and one that removes the classless system, openly creating the Advantaged & The Disadvantaged

 

im not really fussed either way , I've already been outdone by peeps who spent $$ levelling so the gold membership will only make me feel more proud of the fact ive earnt my lvls the dumb way

 

*edit* about the custom clothing thing, im sure the only reason thats so popular is because you dont have to spend RL $$ on it :)

Edited by Ateh

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I vote Yes, and I will buy one. :)

 

I Also voted for the benifits too, normaly i say no to the benifits but in this case i think that it will be an incentive for more members as for the dif colour name (ppl could think yr just showing of that u have the gold account) this would also act as advertising for the new account (if it comes in) hench more $$$ in radu's pocket and in turn more work on the game, so i can only see this as a good thing alround. :)

 

but even if the benifits was not brought in i would still surport EL by paying a monthly fee :happy:

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I've been hoping for this for years,from I found out people could buy from the EL- shop.

To pay monthly and get more rostos, EFEs and ither rare in game would make me feel I had more luck, and it's to have luck I play games.

 

Radu,

 

Any concern about ppl not from US or EURO that have no international credit card or paypal account.

Its kinda hard for some of my friends to be able to use your shop. (Im from Brazil btw, and lots off ppl from my country have some difficulties to spend RL money due to the fact they do not live in euro os US)

I have same problem, not all countries in Europe have euro and I would have to go to my bank and buy them, so it would be more expensive for me.

I would have bought much more in the EL-shop if there had been another way to pay, I have needed those gold-farmers :) to buy there, what I don't like.

I would like to pay via my bank account like I do with other games, monthly or for a year.

 

I don't like the idea with another name-color.

Maybe a special 2-in-one cape like harvest/fr cape or NMT/fr cape ?

 

And I think to get more rare stones and ess would make me play the game much more, lately have I had bad luck most of the time.

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Voted Yes, but won't buy.

 

Reason: It helps the development and maybe the economy.

@all_who_say_it_will_make_a_gap_between_players: So what ? Why are you so jealous ? So i will not pay and will not get 2% more exp. Now what, the world will end ? Pffft c'mon it's a game! :)

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I voted: Yes, but won't buy one

And: Higher chance for stones

 

I won't buy one ... that is for now :) I don't have a job atm ... also not the money to spend on luxuries.

When I do find a job, I would seriously think in taking it though ... not sure about it yet, also depends a little on the effect ingame.

And I voted for Higher chance to find stones, because I haven't found a single stone yet on Jerome_NL :)

 

Jerome_NL

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Definite yes - but imho - the extra exp would be too big an advantage.

All the others simply make you 'luckier' - like tossing a coin in a wishing well.

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Definite yes - but imho - the extra exp would be too big an advantage.

 

Hmmm 20k exp per 1M exp is too big advantage ?

I don't think so...

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Would you maybe make the monthy payment payable by gc, to get money back out of the game? I can see more people doing it this way, but you may also want that real money.

 

No, this would just feed the gold farmers, not me.

 

make a rate 10:1 or even higer :)

 

and btw i was thinking a bit, and i have an extra option for gold membership.

How about ppl get some % of better prices at npc? this could be from 1-10% depending on item price. i believe ppl would agree to pay some RL cash to get stuff cheaper from npc... and maybe sell for bit more too. cuz now anyway to sell to an npc is always a loss ( exceps some summoning stones, ore, some essies)...

cant write more, dont wanna boss to see me at pc :D

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I like the idea and I will probably buy one, just to support the game.

 

However in my opinion it will not prevent gold farming and it will do little to reduce amount of gc's traded for $. As I said in ch 6 discussion yesterday the way to go is to actively manage shop prices to reflect current in-game economy state and adjust them when required.

 

Current shop prices (after $/bought GC's conversion are as follows):

 

- single rosto : 40 kgc

- one rosto from 25 pack : 32 kgc

- single enriched essence (except ele) : 16 kgc

- one enriched essence out of pack of 6 : 13 kgc

- binding stones - same as enriched essies

 

It is clear that it is way cheaper to buy farmed gold and then buy these in game for gc's (unless you do not care really and treat shop purchases mostly as supporting the game and its developers). In my opinion first step to improve an income from the game would be to reduce shop prices to slightly above current in-game value, using rougly 7kgc/1$ exchange rate. I understand that it looks counterintuitive at the first glance that you would adjust the rate to the one farmers use, but I strongly believe this would be just first step - with correct shop prices a demand for gc purchases will largely drop, while you will start to sell more.

 

As to sources of additional income we could have a few p2p instances, with "tickets" being sold only from shop. Obviously those who do not want/cannot buy these for $ could still buy them from another players for gc's. These could be also the case for some special maps not necessarily suited for fighters.

 

Clothing is a great opportunity as others said already, but in general that would require one substantial change - clothes should be breakable! As my char has zero tailoring it is clear that I'd not benefit from that in any way. If you introduce custom clothes that never break, that would be very short term source of income. It would be way better to sell a bunch easy breakable clothes cheaper.

 

New p2p races is also a great idea. I'd gladly buy some kind of elvish p2p race for my character.

 

Well, that's about it for now, just my 2 gc's :D

 

Edit:spelling

Edited by Cruella

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Yes, and will buy.

 

I also checked all the benefits, however not an attempt to be greedy. :D The idea with that being very slight increases across the board for them that won't bias the game too much over non-payers rather than a "larger" increase for 1 or 2 options.

 

As for the name color change, I Yes-ed it if it will make others want to sign up, but personally can live without it if that's the decision.

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Entropy, the code, I believe is in place so why don't you do the custom clothes thing? If someone was willing to code in something for the client to look at the results before uploading, you could charge $5 for uploads of custom clothing.

Excellent idea.

 

Look how popular LabRat's service has been, this is certainly a feature you could be using to make RL$, Radu...

 

Imo that would be a good $ maker for the game, and something alot of people would pay for. (if kept cheap like $5 and not something stupid like $20 a robe)

 

 

Voted yes and will/would buy

 

But Im not sure the extra xp option is needed, the rest seem fine

 

imo I would prefer that a gold membership also opened up a bigger range of custom items:

 

Ie: Gold member only new p2p races etc

Edited by conavar

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imo I would prefer that a gold membership also opened up a bigger range of custom items:

 

Ie: Gold member only new p2p races etc

 

Or maybe to be able to get new items/make new items before other.

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I vote 'Yes', as long as there is only 1 level of 'gold' member (i.e. not bronze/silver/gold/platinum) and the benefits are not huge. I like all the ideas except the colour change for the name.

 

I am out of the game at the moment due to being made homeless but when I return I was thinking of hosting a contest to celebrate and am considering buying a months 'gold membership' for the winner, along with other ingame prizes for the runners-up. I also like the idea of a slight discount if you pay for a whole year of gold membership.

 

One thing I would not like, and this would change my vote to 'No' would be if the 'gold member' player had more rights in disputes (i.e. had the Mods automatically on their side) or had access to more resources (e.g. another continent). I have always hated the idea that areas of an online game are restricted unless you pay.

 

I hope I have made sense with what I have written above. I personally would not buy a membership for myself unless a special occasion (e.g. my birthday) so I would only purchase 1 month at a time, and mainly for other players (e.g. guildies/friends and contest winners).

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i voted 'yes' for the gold membership, but 'none' for the benefits.

 

I think, that it will hurt the good community feeling, when you increase the ingame advantages for paying customers.

Therefor i'd like to suggest advantages for gold members, that do not help their chars directly.

 

Particulary the advantage for gold members could be to be part of the development decisions of the game.

For example, if there is something to decide like a new feature or some tweaking in the game, you could make a poll amongst the gold members only (seperate forum or whatever) and try to follow the majority of those gold members opinions.

Of course that means, that you lose a bit of freedom to do what you personally like with your game, but that would even more happen, if you would sell it or accept another job.

On the other hand, i think it would be acceptable for the 'poorer' players, that they are not taking part in the decisions about the game, because they dont pay for it.

And most of all, it wouldnt introduce more of an ingame separation of 'richer' and 'poorer' chars, which i personally dislike, too.

 

Explanation:

Its one of the main reasons, that i didnt pay real money for this game so far, that i have not enough trust (sry) in the future of the game at the current change policy. Everytime something is changed we learn "that its beta", so i dont like paying for beta stuff, where i just am a beta tester which is frowned upon when he questions things from his point of view (which might be noob or not).

On the contrary i do have trust in the community of experienced people here, that already help the game being mods or hosting stuff and i think that these could be trusted as a kind of council for the future development.

 

---

on a side note, i'd really, really love to see an experiment with the 'Freigeld' Piper mentioned in the other thread, because i cant imagine of a better place to actually try this out and see if it really works within a 'closed' economy like a MMORPG. This might even be interesting to economic researchers.

 

regards,

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Particulary the advantage for gold members could be to be part of the development decisions of the game.

For example, if there is something to decide like a new feature or some tweaking in the game, you could make a poll amongst the gold members only (seperate forum or whatever) and try to follow the majority of those gold members opinions.

That's one of the dumbest things I heard in a while :D

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i voted 'yes' for the gold membership, but 'none' for the benefits.

 

I think, that it will hurt the good community feeling, when you increase the ingame advantages for paying customers.

Therefor i'd like to suggest advantages for gold members, that do not help their chars directly.

 

Particulary the advantage for gold members could be to be part of the development decisions of the game.

For example, if there is something to decide like a new feature or some tweaking in the game, you could make a poll amongst the gold members only (seperate forum or whatever) and try to follow the majority of those gold members opinions.

 

Self-contradictory. Any advantage will influence community. On the other hand, no advantages will not make anybody want to pay. After all, even without any Membership levels it is possible to just donate, isn't it?

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That's one of the dumbest things I heard in a while :D

and you dont care to explain, because you hurt your head badly ?

 

 

i voted 'yes' for the gold membership, but 'none' for the benefits.

 

I think, that it will hurt the good community feeling, when you increase the ingame advantages for paying customers.

Therefor i'd like to suggest advantages for gold members, that do not help their chars directly.

 

Particulary the advantage for gold members could be to be part of the development decisions of the game.

For example, if there is something to decide like a new feature or some tweaking in the game, you could make a poll amongst the gold members only (seperate forum or whatever) and try to follow the majority of those gold members opinions.

 

Self-contradictory. Any advantage will influence community. On the other hand, no advantages will not make anybody want to pay. After all, even without any Membership levels it is possible to just donate, isn't it?

its not self-contradictory. Surely will any advantage influence community, but the way i propose it, the influence will not harm the ingame playing level, but more the outofgame level, where we have this separation already btw.

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What's the point of having a Gold Membership if you don't get any advantage for it?

 

Voted yes, and will buy it, if I have the resources. The split between the players has always been here and will continue to be, but if Gold Membership is implemented, at least Radu gets some use of it, not the people who make $$ out of EL just because they sell gcs.

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I dont see the advantage of buying a goldmembership worth $5. 9600 chance of making something rare isnt much more than the 10,000 one. and usually when you pay 5 more dollars for a membership, you get something unique.

 

Runescape for example. They have new armor/wep/pot/quests for people who pay the extra money. They solved it by not making the armor/weps equipable outside of those maps or "member worlds". I liked the way they did it, i thought it was a great idea. If you could possibl do something like that, that would be cool, and i would vote yes and would pay for it.

 

I dont know how much time the maps/weps/armor would take for you to make, but im sure you have some that you didnt quiet know what to do with yet?

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Entropy, the code, I believe is in place so why don't you do the custom clothes thing? If someone was willing to code in something for the client to look at the results before uploading, you could charge $5 for uploads of custom clothing.
Excellent idea.

 

Look how popular LabRat's service has been, this is certainly a feature you could be using to make RL$, Radu... change the rules so only you can run custom clothing service and start charging. (sorry LabRat :D ...but this idea just seems so much more viable and fair than all the others)

The whole point of custom clothing has always been to make people want to have the same thing from EL itself which is why the code is there in the first place.

 

The system was designed to be able to deal with multiple servers and as such if I mirrored the official clothing server, players with $ can pay Radu and players without can pay me gc.

 

The major benefit for paying $ to Radu would be that everyone ingame would see their customisations, not just the people that have activated my server.

------------------------------------------------

As for the whole "gold status" thing I am not sure that this would help your finances much.

 

IIRC you said on @@6 that you earned $4000 last month and that was not worth your effort (paraphrase).

 

$1000 a month would require 200 players at $5 per month, or 800 players for $4000.

 

You and I both know that you aren't going to get 800 players consistently paying $5 per month which gives you an amount that you yourself consider a pittance. You're back to square one while appearing greedy.

 

As I said in @@6 if you think that you can get more money elsewhere (freelancing/street sweeping/mowing the neighbours lawn/whatever) then the sensible thing for you to do would be to step down and let the devs that don't mind working for free do the client and server work and you just consider EL a nice little sideline.

 

I want you to make shitloads of money Radu, but you are taking EL too personally. The captain of a ship takes overall responsibility but does not need to actually shovel coal in the engine room which is what you are doing at the moment. Get a core group of devs for the server work and tell them "I want to go to Havana" and sit back and let them work.

 

You still call the shots but it leaves you with 60 hours a week where you don't need to micromanage every little detail. 60 hours that may be better spent working for an employer, getting free dental and healthcare etc and a wage you actually consider worthwhile.

 

I hate to be the one to put it like this but you need someone unbiased to say it. I know you have considered it but your loyalty to EL (your baby after all) should not come at the expense of your own financial hardship. I went down that road a long time ago and ruined a marriage because I was too stubborn to give up hoping the magic solution was just around the corner. It was right in front of me the whole time - walk away and go somewhere that didn't pay me in promises but I believed in the promises and never listened to those people telling me that I would make money now by looking elsewhere.

 

I made a mistake that cost me dearly, don't go down the same route.

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I think more experience comes too close to cheating, as it is an experience race in it's essential form and more drops/rares still have to be converted into experience.

Less breakrate I'm mixed about, didn't choose it, cause overall the breakrates are good enough. There are only a few items that could use adjustment, but they need more adjusting then I think a gold membership should allow for.

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I voted yes - and would definitely buy it if it's kept to 5-6$ a month.

 

I also voted for all benifits except the less items breakages one - the reason I would like this kept the same as it is now, is to support all the skills in game and keep manuers/tailors/crafters - and the other skills that feed the demands of us hungry mob. While I can see everyone would jump at the fact an item would last longer - and I know it would only be a slight increase in life expectancy - I am looking at the bigger picture for all and think that this would be fairer.

 

I also see the gold membership as positive - extra rare items in game keep the prices down - for everyone not just the gold members. EL has always been a free game and will continue to be so - no one is being forced to pay to continue to play it - but for those of us that can - and want to - support el and support Radu/Roja's efforts - it's a nice way to do so.

 

One concern I do have - and I'm certain Radu/Roja have already thought about is - already we see people in the bans forum who have spent rl money in the shop and think this entitles them to break the rules and get away with it. I can already see people using the "I paid for a years gold membership - how dare you ban me!!" excuse - Maybe there should be a seperate page with a "licence agreement" for gold members - that they have to agree to before they can even pay for the gold membership - which clearly states what they get for gold membership but also that its not a get out of jail free card?

 

Good Luck with this Devs :D

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Radu,

 

Any concern about ppl not from US or EURO that have no international credit card or paypal account.

Its kinda hard for some of my friends to be able to use your shop. (Im from Brazil btw, and lots off ppl from my country have some difficulties to spend RL money due to the fact they do not live in euro os US)

I have same problem, not all countries in Europe have euro and I would have to go to my bank and buy them, so it would be more expensive for me.

I would have bought much more in the EL-shop if there had been another way to pay, I have needed those gold-farmers :) to buy there, what I don't like.

What about Pay Pal? I know some people don't say the best about it but I've had it for a couple years and it has worked great for me, from eBay to EL, and I don't even have a credit card, just a regular debit card.

 

I will have to support the idea, voted Yes, and would buy it on the PK Server, where I love to play EL, if I had the chance to.

Personally, I never liked the way how some people just can't accept changes in EL because they can't benefit directly from it. Refering to people that just don't want this idea because they can't/don't want to pay for it, because "others" would have an advantage.

 

EL isn't a game where you can win, be number #1 and be there for life. Just look at how many posts have been created to know who was the best. All we can get is a list of people for a specific time of EL.

 

"Times must and do change!" This would be a nice way to finance the game development and those who can't live with it... do it the Japanese way. :D

 

A list of advantages with a chance to select one/some, not all, would be the way to go for me.

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