Thoughts on the new Ruby system

  • I wanted to take a few minutes to go over the changes to the new Ruby system in detail. I was pretty excited when GF asked for our feedback on changes we would like to see made.

    I have to say I'm fairly disappointed with what they came up with. Allow me to explain.


    First there is no longer a consistent return on diamonds. Some items give 25% return on items while most items players would want only give a 10% return on diamonds

    for instance

    If you purchase Enhanced Moon Jewel - Elven it costs you 35 Diamonds and returns 3 rubies a 10% return for investment

    If you Purchase a Green Devil turtle mount It costs you 300 Diamonds and gives 75 Rubies back. a 25% return for investment


    Maybe that's intentional but it's certainly not what we requested when you asked for feedback


    Next let's talk about None tradable items. I can't see why GF did this. I have guildies that love costumes and such, so for their R/L birthdays i would usually gift them a set. With the new change that won't be as likely. There was no reason to do this. It gains you no more cash and can alienate some folks who do like to gift costumes. Not to mention the prices on costumes are OUTRAGEOUS ! 1000 rubies for a Silver Envoys Costume... yeah you can keep that


    next up let's talk about pets

    I like the graphics on some of the new pets. and IF they had an ability "Buddy resonance for example" I might even consider purchasing one or two. I'm not sure why marketing thought it was a good idea to create new pets with either zero abilities or what has to be the strangest pet ever "The grey Wolf-Pet Egg" only gives a bonus to XP.

    I simply cannot justify a 800 ruby Spring Piglet vanity pet when the only purchases i will be getting rubies from are needed items all of which have the same old crappy 10% return rate !



    Finally when you asked for feedback i mentioned scalability in returns. This was not addressed or fixed. for example

    If i purchase a single Jade Treasure Key for 5 diamonds I receive a single ruby in return "20% return on investment"

    Yet if I choose to buy them in mass and buy 50 at once it costs 200 diamonds and the return is 20 rubies "a 10% return on investment" so I can save 50 diamonds and lose 50 rubies? that's just silly


    Oh and before i forget. Good riddance to the wheel of sillyness. It's not like we are going to have extra rubies to spend on it with the rework the way it is now anyway.



    In closing, I'm not sure why GF bothers asking for feedback they seem to ignore what we have to say anyway. these changes did not go nearly far enough to fix a broken system and I would request they take a second look at it.



    If it were me this is what i would do

    Make rubies universally scale to 30% of diamonds spent. on EVERY ITEM

    Remove the non-giftability

    Adjust prices on vanity items to a realistic level.


    Feel free to add your own thoughts below

    Saum

  • Yes...when I first saw that price on the Silver Envoy set (Which you can farm for free, or get from fashion show) I thought, well that's a bad typo and I'm sure they are going to fix that (100 rubies..might be worth that, but 1000...that's LOL silly). Actually, now that I re-read what I wrote, no, not even worth 100 rubies.

  • Yeah the ruby reworking was a dissapoinment and a loss for the players.. The changes I saw were a


    decrease in plus rates to compensate the 100% +12 jewel for 80 rubies, and a swap of slot drills over to


    the diamond side. Like is this seriously what gameforge focuses its attention on, making more money by


    "reworking" the item shop and recolouring items from lvl 50 intances and selling them for 1000 rubies..

    :evil::!:

  • Sadly true.

    The funny thing is they have the ability to make real money with the item shop. They are just so dang greedy that the miss the forest through the trees.


    Here is a couple examples.

    I had asked for them to keep the Jade Treasure keys in the Item shop for a couple weeks after the anniversary event ended so we could buy them and clean the glistening Jade chests from our inventory. "I have probably over 1000 across multiple toons." Well... they did. but not once did they put them on sale. and at 5 diamonds per key its not worth purchasing them for what is inside. If they were 2 or 3 diamonds a key, i would have bought a slew of them. but even if you buy 50 of them to get the best price. "they avg out to 4 dias each". still not worth it.


    Or when they do have something cool in Item shop for sale. they neglect to even tell us about it.

    For instance today in the Item shop they have the Strong Boca pet for sale "20% to tp/xp/loot and sacks with normal pets" Its rare to have pets on sale with a buff other than Buddy Resonance and spiritual half. "I'm still looking for them to put one up for sale that has the Kindred spirit buff" It was just dumb luck that i checked the Pet section to see it available !


    Lets move on to plussing gear.

    I can spend 500 diamonds in a single attempt to plus my weapon up to 17-20 with no guarantee of success. that equals neary $20 a try !

    Let me tell you the first time you fail in mass at that level you just put away your wallet and don't try anymore. That equals more LOST income for them.


    Next up is Durability increasers.

    No way these should be as expensive as they are. 100 diamonds each with a 100% guarantee success and I would buy them. Heck some gear i have has an 85 durability. thats money in the bank for them if they got realistic on pricing.


    *



    Honestly I wish they would fire their entire marketing dept. They are single handedly ruining the game. "please pass on to the marketing dept that I said that"



    and here is what I would do to FIX this mess.


    1st I would set diamond rates as follows.


    1000 Diamonds per $10 spent. 10% bonus after the first purchase


    so it would read

    $10 1,000 Diamonds with no bonus

    $20 2,000 Diamonds with a bonus of 200 diamonds

    $50 5,000 Diamonds with a bonus of 500 diamonds

    $100 10,000 Diamonds with a bonus 1,000 diamonds

    $200 20,000 Diamonds with a bonus 2,000 diamonds


    As for Rubies i would set a flat minimum return rate of 30%

    so 100 diamonds spent = 30 rubies regardless of what was purchased.

    I would also set a ruby price for EVERY item in the item shop in addition to its diamond price. we earned the rubies by giving you money, let us players decide what WE WANT TO SPEND RUBIES ON


    Moving onto Gems

    No gem should have less than a 66% success rate. PERIOD. I don't mind a little risk, but Gameforge has gotten ridiculous.

    No gem should ever cost more that $5 per attempt.


    I went from spending a couple hundred bucks a month back in the day, to only buying diamonds occasionally these days. My passion for the game hasn't changed. my pocket book is still doing good. its just gameforge Greed thats has changed.


    Saum

    P.S.

    As with everything around here i fully expect this to fall on deaf ears, or worse yet for gameforge to butcher what was said and increase prices even more as they have done with the new Diamond rates and ruby returns

  • I fully agree with saum.


    Before I took a longer time off the game (about 2-3 years) diamands have been worth more for the money. But now I don't really want to spend that much. I'm lucky i had a character over with about over 10k Diamands, with current prices they are worth about 200-300€! in past this was about 100€ in a Dia-Promo. And even when i see some prices i think: really? Yeah, I used some of the diamons to plus my wings to over 20, but wings are really cheap. When i see the costs for weapons and so on...


    At least it would be an improvement to go back to the old values in the past. It's just true that making things more expensive doesn't bring in more money. Reducing the prices in the shop and giving more diamands for money would increase the will to buy and use them instead of thinking about it and more often saying no.

    Baldr - Secretmage

    Magier/Hexer/Priester/Schurke//

    Rüstigerentner

  • At least it would be an improvement to go back to the old values in the past. It's just true that making things more expensive doesn't bring in more money. Reducing the prices in the shop and giving more diamands for money would increase the will to buy and use them instead of thinking about it and more often saying no.

    This !

  • They must not understand supply and demand... Always lurking for some good news... but since the rework of diamond prices I haven't played game at all... good thing there are games exactly like RoM with better developers!! It only took these developers to screw up so royally for me to find the exact game, however, with better developers...

  • There is a really important information discussed here. I haven't any idea about this topic before. OK, I will continue the process this way. Thanks for your important discussion.

  • Sorry Ernest, I think they found it insulting in some way, though honestly i tried to be as eloquent as I could. I gave up after this


    I do check the forums occasionally to see if anything has gotten better but sadly it doesn't appear to be the case.


    Would I ever come back???? maybe but not at the current price point.


    I would say more but im afraid it would just come across as bitter, so i wont.


    Best of luck to those still playing that things get better !


    Saum

  • When I look at it I think GF has taken a page from the Chinese game marketers/developers in that price everything outrageously and then try to make it look like a good deal by hawking them for a limited time once every 6 to 8 weeks...or more.