From this previous topic, Noticing how expensive everything was in the Korean Cash shop made me worry about the game economy, not just the quantities of silver in the server, but actually the revenue that the game could generate in terms of real life currencies.
Well, My last haircut was roughly $3, I could have about 10 real life haircuts for the same amount a kTOS haircut costs.
Due to the current exchange rates, I’d have to pay ONE FULL DAY OF WORK for a Token or a ToS Haircut, and I have an salary that is somewhat average for professionals in their 20-30’s here in Mexico, so… The average 10-20’s wouldn’t be purchasing much, and quickly falling behind, not turning into a potential customer once they reach a more productive age.
I have rambled a lot about it… but now, I want to offer a couple suggestions that I believe would help the game be more successful in the west, therefore, I suggest IMC as the sole publisher of iToS:
- Drop the prices about 85% for haircuts, these are just too expensive. Think of sales volume. Some players like to change haircuts every now and then, some of them even do it recurrently given the right price, it’s a long run shot. Edit: Haircuts seem to come in as pieces of gear for a special slot, think wig collection!
- Remove EXP Boosters, these are detrimental for the Western F2P experience and a frustrated F2P player is less likely to ever spend and more likely to leave the game or not take it seriously at all.
- Drop the price of the VIP Token by 66%, I’m talking to about 10 USD, so more people can afford it, the more, the merrier; and the merrier, the more likely to spend more again, think of sales volume and people purchasing over and over.
- Replace the +3 Movement Speed buff from the VIP token in kOBT with an additional simultaneous attribute. The movement speed attribute makes any potential PvP unbalanced beetween Free and Token players, and 3 simultaneous attributes makes the token more attractive.
In the ingame economy, I think silver is pretty worthless and easy to come by, and when everybody can be rich, nobody is really rich, these are my suggestions:
- Make silver drops scale based on level difference, like experience, so, botters can’t just slow-farm silver low level mobs, this doesn’t address bots farming loot.
- Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.
- Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
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Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula, like this:
– Base tax = 0.80% = 0.008
– Define multiple silver limits, each 10k, 20k, 30k… up to 100k, 200k, 300k… each 100k up to 1m, each 1m, 2m, 3m… up to 10m, each 10m, 20m, 30m … up to 100m, 100m, 200m, 300m … up to 1000m and so on.
– For each limit that a sale suprasses, add an iteration for the tax to be calculated with it.
– So your tax formula becomes: (1-BASE_TAX)^(1+ITERATIONS) (This is the iterativity I’m talking about).
– Your tax is recalculated every time you get raw income (market sales, npc sales, silver from trades), based on the total amount of income you’ve earned from previous sales/trades that day. This makes it so that the more you sell/trade during the same day, the more tax % you actually have to pay, even if you sell bunches of cheap items.
– Your total income tax is reset periodically, maybe daily, weekly or during maintenances.
– This system emphasizes on avoiding players from getting extremely rich, while helping players with less who handle less money (mostly during the earlier levels), pay a lot less taxes than rich players.
Example: - Your base tax: 0.8% (it does seem low, but it scales up).
- You sell an item for 50k, you have 1 base iteration and suprased 5 limits so far (10k,20k,30k,40k and 50k), so you’re getting 6 iteratinons. Your tax is
1-(1-0.8%)^(6 iterations) = 1-0.992^6 = 0.0471 = 4.71%
Your taxes will be4.71%, so your item will be charged for it:
50,000 - 4.71% = 50,000 - 2355 = 47,645. - In this same scenario, you sell another item for 100k, accodring to this system, you have already sold
47,645, so your total income will be147,645you have 1 base iteration + 10 iterations (10k-100k, the next iteration not being until 200k), meaning you’re getting 11 iterations, your tax is
1-(1-0.8%)^(11 iterations) = 1-0.92^11 = 0.0846 = 8.46%
Your taxes will be8.46%, so your total income will be charged for it:
147,645*8.46%=12,491.
But you’ve already paid2,355, so only12,491-2,355 = 10,136are applicable taxes, meaning you will earn100,000-10,136=89,864, by making these calculations, you pay the same when you sell a single item for 150k, or several items for 150k in the same period (day/week/maintenance). - Daily Income should tracked account-wide.
- Any amount of Silvers spent with an NPC should be sustracted from your daily income, so the more silvers you spend with NPCs, the less taxes you have to pay in your future transactions with other players.
- I’ve made an estimation spreadsheet, so you could try fiddling with the base tax, daily income and sales amount.
- Notice that the higher amounts of silver you recieve in a small period of time, the higher the taxes you will be charged, towards 900m, you are charged the following (when base tax is 0.8%: you get charged 30.89% which I consider fair for earning that large sum in such a short time period, while, when base tax is 2%, you get chraged 60.89% for the same quantity, which I consider way too abusive).
Please, let me know what you think about my ideas, Like if you want to let IMC know we want a healthy economy both for the company and the server.
Edit: an amount was wrong in the example calculation.
Edit: Corrected some percentages I wrote wrong.
If removed, great! If they keep that im ok too. Not big deal.
i do a lot pve and other stuff but my focus is PVP.