Endless copper mine price

[Erikber]

Any person involved in any sort of business would know that, when selling to a limited range of customers, you will make way more profit by selling it at a lower price aslong as that price covers your expenses.
And I highly doubt BlueByte's expenses of providing a player with a virtual item in a virtual game would exceed 1/100£. Thus, if we assume the expense of such an item is 1/100£, BlueByte would make a profit worth 75000% the investment for each item sold.

And to think about all those people who are enraged about Apple who has a profit margin of close to 400% per iPhone sold to a retailer. And that only considers the cost of the material, thus doesn't include shipping, manufacturing, taxes, tolls etc.

[Sinister-King]

They're crazy prices. However I have someone on my friends list who has 5 gem pits, since people have starting buying them I cannot imagine they'll lower the prices.

Never mind.. we survived without them before.

[Dave-i-am]

i have played in numerous 'Free to Play' games and this is unfortunately the way things go. Micro cash items normally start cosmetic or just give a little boost as a fair price even or those with restricted disposable income. Then as the game gets more popular prices of new items start to go up and their value in giving an advantage becomes more apparent.
I can only put it down to greed on the part of the game producers, they see cash and they want more. Soon items start to appear that while they may not be 'essential' to the game give such an advantage to the cash rich players that it makes it almost impossible for the grinder and farmer to compete
Watch and see what happens once they start to introduce PvP

Its not so much greed on the dev's part (tho does have its role to play) its how do you put it, the mugs that pay it.. Any1 in the world with an item can price it highly, even to an extent that when sum1 else see's that price they just laugh and say "have you gone mad",, but then sum1 pays it... its like said in the post above about Apple making 400% margin on the its products... You don't have to be a genius to work out Apples products are hugely overpriced.. but its the mugs again paying it..

I myself never bring to attention the cost of something.. I know if I'm being ripped off.

[BobLurker]

Trying to separate out what makes sense and what doesn't is the hard part. Paying for a game is an OK thing to do - no problem there, we've all bought games before at whatever price (£10, £25, £50, etc). With online games it has become standard that you can pay for elements within the game too - the micro-payment model working well for online games like this - again, nothing unusual in it. So, it comes down to identifying (as others have said) whether the individual item is worth the cost. For me, paying £75 of real money for something like a copper mine, is insane. I wonder whether anyone ever gets the money together in notes and then looks at the item on-screen to starkly realise that they are about to pay that real money for something as insignificant as a copper mine in a game. I guess someone must be prepared to pay it, but I can't imagine there are many people who have that much money to basically throw away. I hope it's not the way everything is going to go in Settlers, but like others I fear it is - seen it too many times before already. Ah well.

[fishslice]

Firstly I agree with Tierarzt in that you dont have to buy them and they dont give you an in-game advantage other than saving you time in rebuild activities.
Secondly I dont have any yet - but I may do at some point......

My rational for this is that for certain things there needs to be a barrier to everyone being able to find, build or trade everything - otherwise the game and its trade system wont work as everyone will have a fully self sufficient island which defeats the need to trade which is ingrained in the game culture and the need to spend hours every day with the game....
Also the gem buyer needs to feel he has an advantage or otherwise there wont be the gem sales needed to maintain the game - as has been said BB is a commercial organisation. Obviously the advantage isn't real - its about buying time or buying a shortcut to what would happen naturally given sufficient amount of time spent waiting.

Now for the detail;
According to BB

• the endless copper mine is just that - it never expires unlike the gem pit.
• Also BB believe it to return its investment cost after 600 days at L1 (based on what I don't know but lets assume the logic is correct for a moment) - as we all know, no-one keeps any high value item at L1 its not cost effective so at L5 it returns its cost in 600 / 5 = 120 days.
• Many people have a buff buddy who they swap baskets with twice a day so assuming 75% of the time buffed this reduces it time to return cost to 80 days.
• If you bought the gems with a 50% free offer then this becomes 54 days as 54 days + 50% free = 81 days.
• Rather than buy the gems to buy the mine the better deal would be to buy the gem pit and use the proceeds from the pit to buy the mine - the pit returns twice its cost so therefore paying for the mine with pit gems halves the cost further so we get to 27 days.

So given the logic above it can make sense to buy the endless copper mines - especially if you buy it via gem pit proceeds that you obtained through discounted gems.

And of course all of the above only applies if you are one of the many people that support this game either by paying for gems with real life money or by paying gem goods from other players that have spent their money.

fishslice
(proud to support the game through the purchase of gems)

[Balgra]

This is one of the main reasons why me and 4 of my friends that i invited have quit the game... all level 40+

Settler game play pales in comparison to something like world of warcraft yet the pricing on it is absolutely farcical, you can easily spend 3x / 4x the cost of a full years subscription to other mmorpgs on this game and get nothing more out of it than having to put fields down quicker or not at all.

adventure loot is all bind on use so its cheaper to buy it from the AH than to actually do the adventure - the game is flawed.

now they bring out items that cost £75 per item and all it does is allow you to play the game LESS - who makes up these ideas.... the point would be to play MORE not less from these items.

no business plan and slow, sloppy updates, crazy economy breaking bugs - football event was a joke and gave everyone free xp for little resource's doing a boring rectangular map, items costing way more than a sensible man would put into something like this - greedy and bad planning.


here is hoping they read this and get their act into gear, ill be watching the game changes on forums but as for playing, its just not interactive enough (bar farmville style fields and well replacing) and doing adventures that give nothing more special than what you can buy from the auction house.

/rant over

[Balgra]

Fishslice, your a cool guy and on my friends list - but honestly, how much money have you invested in this game now? got to be over £1000???

your farms are matched with silo's and water with watermills, i last saw 4 gems pits and no doubt you have an extra 250 general (and must have bought the 'faster' 200 general when it came out?) so you can't be interested in the meager 200 gems from leveling up either

but all these items just allow you to play the game less, i dont understand the logic in it - apart from not having to replace annoying fields or wells but like i say it allows you to play less which against the general game theory if people are paying for it.

the gold top ups on your mines are at the 10k level so allow you to upgrade things, but this just allows you to do adventures quicker for xp, but you have the gem pits so don't need the gems nor the loot from the adventures your getting (besides rare houses) and its near cheaper to buy these from the trade tab - i just don't understand what we get from this game apart from a chatroom and social place.

[Tierarzt]

Balgra, you forgot that this game can be played without spending a single penny. That's something you can't do in a game like World of Warcraft.

[Balgra]

tierarzt, we know this, especially from the 3 times previous you posted - but your missing the point on the costing vs time vs reward

spend money = play less

save gold coin = more effcient to buy loot from trade tab

upgrade buildings = play more


its a bizzare game plan that breaks after a certain level. either your stuck at level 2 /3 and not replacing 70+ wells / fields over a 4 day cycle in a simple browser game OR have nothing else to do in spare time so can sit here 24/7... if the latter is the case then cool for you, but what do you get out of this intensive well and field game?

loot is not bound on pickup, so buying from auction house is generally cheaper, offers no advantage over other people.... all explained in my post.

once again, we get the fact you can play without paying, we have seen you say it 3x already no need to repeat cheers if your not able to address other statements.

[Tierarzt]

Balgra, no other statement needs to be addressed. TSO is advertised as a free-to-play game. It's your choice whether you put money into it or not.