Tree of Savior Forum

Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server

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.
  • 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 be 4.71%, 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 be 147,645 you 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 be 8.46%, so your total income will be charged for it:
    147,645*8.46%=12,491.
    But you’ve already paid 2,355, so only 12,491-2,355 = 10,136 are applicable taxes, meaning you will earn 100,000-10,136=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.

24 Likes

Blah blah blah you know what could actually help IMC change? Boycotting.
if no one pays the game because its so expensive imc wont get money. the ONLY reason why they WONT change the prices is because to some people it ISNT expensive and that they do get money. if people r paying its our fault for these expensive prices, not imc and nexon.

2 Likes

So, where is the font where I can read about it on IMC international server?

2 Likes

Well, I’ve seen many games getting “boycotted” so many times I’ve lost count. Did it hurt the company? Nope.

The international server isn’t up, we cannot boycott it, give them a lead to a healthy international release, so there won’t be any need for “boycotts”.

I’m basing everything from the information we’re recieving from players in the Korean server (which was now released), see this. We need to act somehow if we want a different type of release for iToS.

I dunno why u quoted my haircut price hahaha.

Many of your suggestions are really good and I really hope IMC will consider changing them in some sense.

Here’s my comment on some of your ideas.

Drop the prices about 85% for haircuts

  • I think cutting it half will be fine.
    Remove EXP Boosters
  • If they remove, better they increase the exp rate a bit.
    Drop the price of the VIP Token by 66%
  • $10 is good.
    Replace the +3 Movement Speed buff from the VIP token in kOBT with an additional simultaneous attribute
  • i don’t know how much faster it is, but i’m ok if this doesn’t apply to pvp.

Make silver drops scale based on level difference, like experience

  • This means silver drop penalty. It works atm, however when the game reaches to the end game, this penalty will make silver farming unavailable for high level players. They will be forced to only hunt monsters around their range.

Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.

  • good idea
    Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
  • it’s good, but i think it’s not an urgent thing to do atm
    Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula - haven’t read yet
1 Like

I’m wondering if you got the part that in KR is Nexon’s call not IMC in the monetization area, while here, we are under IMC directly, not that IMC wouldn’t implement that here, but until they express that themselves i will just wait, you people are freaking out about something that is not set in stone yet, come up with the same excuse of “its better say no to prevent it than say it later and don’t get any results”, which lead to who decide in the end is IMC independent of what we say, its their call in the end, but we don’t know what future holds yet for this game, at least on the Int version. As for KR, i don’t really care what they do there, its their culture and have nothing to do with me, if its easier to them to play under that condition fine, but if its not they will complain as much as we would if it was our case.

On a side note, the game is not really released in KR, its OBT yet, which i think it was forced by Nexon (note that all i’m typing in this paragraph is just me guessing) and made things press on IMC side to leave us and other versions beside KR to work on bugs. I don’t think its bad in a way, i mean, it will make them work fast on bug fix and what not, but on another hand, it could cause a heavy blow on the company’s reputation if something goes wrong.

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Blocked exchange and sales limit does not make you worried?

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Comparing the price of a real life haircut to the cost of a hair style in game has got to be one of the silliest things I’ve seen come out of this absurd TP controversy.

Too cheap for ::: insert cosmetic item here::: ? Then simply don’t buy it. This whole campaigning for a price drop thing makes no sense to me. How much you paid for your haircut is completely irrelevant. My last haircut was free, did it myself. Do you see me campaigning for free new hairdos? NO.

Is it on our version? You saw somewhere IMC saying they would implement on our version? If there is such info for our version link for me so i can update myself, otherwise i don’t see a reason to be worried for now. Well its just me, everyone has it’s way to think about it, but i am like this, i worry when the thing happen, thinking too much on something that may or may not even happen is definitely something i will ever do again in my life, i talk by experience, which led me to discovery an hereditary decease (i wonder if that is the right term) called Psoriasis.

1 Like

The game already got released today, it was a non grateful surprise.

I’d rather start making suggestions now, before anything happens, you see, there are people already talking about “boycotting” a server whose opening hasn’t even been announced yet, like @WorldisMine. I’d rather act beforehand.

Oh boy, It does, but these are the suggestions I have so far. I have only so much mind, you know.

I mean, there are bots already… I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it.

That is new to me, didn’t know they would be that stupid to do a move like that, tbh, i’m not liking the way things are going, i mean, i know they have a contract and all, but IMC as the developer should step on the break or this will end up more ugly than it already is, just by the fact it got a Release OK make me think in all kinds of possibilities for that to happen, and i assure you, they aren’t good ones lol.[quote=“Snivs, post:11, topic:126238”]
I’d rather start making suggestions now, before anything happens, you see, there are people already talking about “boycotting” a server whose opening hasn’t even been announced yet, like @WorldisMine. I’d rather act beforehand.
[/quote]
About that i still keep my position as neutral for now, just waiting and see what will happen.

I may be silly, I may or may not even want some of these haircuts.

I want them to sell, and I want them to sell good, not because I want to be comfortable, but because I want the game to be profitable as well.

First, people really need to understand the diference between IMC and Nexon. TP cost for itens is a nexon problem, IMC has nothing do to with it.

The only thing worrying me is the early release… and that too is Nexon sh**. I really liked the token system.

About the ideas:

Drop the prices about 85% for haircuts.
Agree.
Remove EXP Boosters.
This one i kinda dont care :joy: If removed, great! If they keep that im ok too. Not big deal.
Drop the price of the VIP Token by 66%, I’m talking to about 10 USD
Agree.
Replace the +3 Movement Speed
+3 MS dont change much, but, if they keep that in iToS, at least for pvp they need disable.
Make silver drops scale based on level difference.
Already in kTEST.
Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.
I really liked this idea, but i dont think it will change much… unfortunately its only 5 runs/day for almost all dungeons.
Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
Good idea too!
Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula,
This one i didnt like… in a few scenarios could be pretty bad… 10% for all its ok for me.

@WorldisMine
LOL… dude, you are a genius!.. Seriously, you understand that TP gives money to Nexon and not to IMC right? theres no boycotting… at least not for now.

2 Likes

Like what scenarios?

Theres a lot of people, and every person focus on one thing. Like me, i’m a pvp person :smile: i do a lot pve and other stuff but my focus is PVP.

having said that, imagine someone focused on market, like a alchemist. he can make thousands of potions a day but can only sell a few without starting to lose a lot of money. We dont know the next ranks so might have other classes craft basead.

Or, imagine you reach max lvl and are aiming for a rare item. You are farming money. You are in map where drop the item “X” and this itens have a really good demand on the server so its a good way to make some silver. You drop a lot of these and if you sell them all you lose too much money.

Hope you understand me. You had nice ideas, but this one could not be good in a few scenarios.

It’s complaining to have a price that is decent and voicing your opinion as a consumer.
It’s absolutely not being cheap to say a micro transaction item is overpriced if you compare it to something of equal value. (Let’s say in a really popular moba 25$ is the price of the most expensive cosmetic item you can get but that skin will completely changes your character animations and voice sample.
Hence 30$ for a hair style is straight up disrespectful and a sane person would rather buy and play another game for that price. From my point of view, anything that is more than 5$ for a piece of cosmetic is a bad move. Sell me a full costume bundle for 30$ and I can see myself paying for it to support the game. That bundle would include a weapon skin, hair skin and a really neat costume plus some dye options. That would be a fair pricing.
10$ for vip service is also the maximum price you should charge for a subscription service in a F2P game. P2P games are 15$ and you have access to everything…

3 Likes

if they release game through Steam like they did with iCBT2, then it is possible that prices will be regionalized.

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In all honesty i would buy haircuts, be it separated or in packs, same for hair colors, i would support the company by buying stuff om the CS, for me its not a problem, but the pricing is what worries more right now.

Unfortunately, many people only look to what they think it’s convenient.

I do agree there, it’s just haircuts, i know they give lots of work to be created, but its a cosmetic item, not utility.

That one is on the edge, many like many don’t, i don’t mind having only EXP booster, but i wouldn’t want drop, token or any of those kind of boosters in game.

Oh God no VIP status for Christ Sake’s, most stupid and useless thing ever created for games, if i wanted some meaningful VIP status i would get one at a local club of sorts.

If it don’t change much why not remove it?

Interesting.

I don’t know how it is now on KR version, but i would rather trade silver drop for EXP balance on dungeons.

I don’t think its a good idea imo, it can bring some other problems, specially with silver sellers, but since we need to make money in some way, but in all honesty, IF the game goes as IMC announced on that interview, i can see some classes making money doing services for certain stuff.

You know that each country have a dollar value don’t you? It doesn’t matter if its regional, if the price still high in dollar it will be even higher for those who country have a higher dollar price.