This is going to be a long post summarizing the huge problem with in game economy but should be relatively easy to understand.
Summary: NCsoft wants you to buy Kinah from them, not from other people. This is due to their lack of understanding on what the players want therefore lack of sells. So they have to force you to spend money by limiting the kinah in game.
Part 1. The good old day of tiger candies
Do you remember when the game was release an entire year ago? To NCsoft that was the glory days when bots had not yet infested the server. You can see people seeling the candies with 90k 80k, sometime even 70k in their personal store. Sometime thousands of them together. They are the whales, NCsoft's ideal customers. If we calculate the price of Quna, we see that the lowest price you can get is 12k Quna for 250$, 48 Quna for 1$. This is a very important number because whatever the gold seller are selling, this is their ceiling price. At this moment, NCsoft are the only kinah seller and they are slling them fast. I am geniusly curious how much of the Aion classic revenue are coming from just selling those tiger candies for the first 3 months. My guess will be over 75%.
*People were complaining about in game inflation and P2W, but NCsoft didn't care because they were the only people that can sell kinah so they continue.
Part 2. Incompetency
This is a fact that no one can deny at this point. It took them literal months to fix the HP on upper fortress gate and Dux. They litearlly destroyed the game by themself. This turned away a lot of the the hardcore players including the whales. After that incident you see significantly less people selling the tiger candies in significatly less quantity. This is a huge cut to the aion classic revenue because that is the only consumable in their Quna shop that is desired by the player in large quantities. This plus the surge of botters mean buying kinah from the Quna shop is no longer economically sounds. The faction balance in each servers (before merge) are also extremely imbalance. All these problems compounds together which causes alot of trouble for aion classic's revenue. People are complaining on forum all day because of the in game inflation and NCsoft couldn't care less about it. The game is in such bad state that I don't think any management will agree to hire more people to maintain this game(including catching bots).
*NCsoft want to milk this game to death and they almost did it.
Part 3. Thing they did right to keep this game afloat
Luckily for them, they pushed 1.5 out and people have more content to do.
This relieves the issue of dimishing population -> slightly more revenue from siels aura and deava pass
Then they start to sell reset scrolls.
This allows people to farm more fort instance/DC/TL/DP which is a welcome change for the hardcore players. I would even say that NCsoft made the mistake to not milk this even more by selling the DP timestone -> higher demand in Quna
They came up with Event pass that contains lot of high demands items such as relics and enchantment stone.
This open another source of revenue for them to aim at hardcore players
All these are good moves to keep this game alive and they are good in ways they all have limits. The most you can get from event pass are what's in there. The most you can farm instant is 24hr a day. These are good moves.
*NCsoft saved the game, temporarily.
Part 4. GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED
But why settle for 1$ if you can milk 2$ from the players. The majorirty of their income in the earlier days were from whales. There are only so many reset scrolls the whales can buy and run. Only couple account they can unlock all level with Quna the first day it drops. NCsoft want to milk the Whale and they want it right now. Now we establish their goal and their history of doing it. We can follow their logic to see why they suddenly want to deal with botter with more drastic measure.
*If the botter can sell kinah at lower price than the Quna shop, the whales aren't going to be paying NCsoft.
To make whale buy kinah from Quna shop again here are the things that NCsoft need to achieve.
1. Push the kinah price on the market higher. Simple supply and demand question, if there are less kinah in the game, kinah will go for higher price.
2. Make sure that they are the only one that can sell kinah
3. Making sure that whales have place to sunk the kinah
Point 1 is achieved through making drop rate on mobs exteremely low. If we look at the pure kinah inflow in this game, we see alot components
Supply = Selling candy + Kinah drop from mobs + kinah from selling drops from mobs + quest + siege rewards (last two are basically 0)
Kinah Sink = Soul sickness + broker fee + crafting material from NPC + traveling + consumable (kisks, powershards etc.)
Their goal is to increase the % of selling candies so dropping rate being lower is the perfect solution.
They don't ban bots to make the game economy more stable, they ban it so the total kinah supply is lower, the praise you give them for dealing with bot problem is just side effect they couldn't care less about.
Point 2 is achieved through actually banning the bots. Normal player like me don't know and don't have a channel to sell the kinah even if they have. Botters are NCsoft's direct competitor.
Point 3 will be ongoing. Trust me they are going to start selling BT reset scroll within next 8 weeks. The team can't wait longer else the KPI will look bad. This means more gears drop, more gear to enchant and higher demand in Kinah.
My only problem with BS they are doing is the lowering of drop rate even in instance. If they think making open world void of drop will stop the botters because they can't do instance then at least put drops inside instance so normal players can get kinah from it.
I farmed Udas solo for exp 4 times, all of the drop can't even reach the daily kinah cap and I kill almost 200 of elites mobs. Only the humanoid mob in there drop kinah and each one is roughly 10k so each run I barely make 2mil SOLO.
This post is inspired by their newest candy Charming Pink Tiger Candy in the Quna shop. It clearly shows you what NCsoft is thinking. If this is the best way you can think to keep this game alive, maybe take some advice from the players.
1.Start selling BT scrolls, people still want the gears that drop from there. This is ok because BT is still time consuming.
2. Sell the pet from last deava pass as it is the only source of balaur mat. You can keep the drop on the instance boss but have limited pet food quantity weekly.
3.FIX THE DAMN UPPER FORTRESS INSTANCE. Make another one where you can do without the entry item right beside the new version. Everything the same as the old one so people will buy reset scrolls on those. Sapphire medals are cheap enough that people will farm AP 24/7 if you start selling them again.
4.More skins, even the one you can borrow from retail will be good. Idk if you need permission from NCsoft Korea to do that, but that is something you definitely should do. Wardrobe is here for that exact reason.
Conclusion:
Whales are going to buy kinah no matter what but have you ever consider why they want to buy kinah? They want to have multiple set of gear which they need kinah to buy L/R, enchant, and socket. This means you can sell those thing in limited quantities such as making enchantment stone you get in event pass tradable or add back the manastone pack in the event pass. All of these are ways to capture more revenue but the way you eventually choose is to force everyone to whale so they can just play this game normally. If this is not incompentency, I don't know what is.
This is going to be a long post summarizing the huge problem with in game economy but should be relatively easy to understand. Summary: NCsoft wants you to buy Kinah from them, not from other people. This is due to their lack of understanding on what the players want therefore lack of sells. So they have to force you to spend money by limiting the kinah in game. Part 1. The good old day of tiger candies Do you remember when the game was release an entire year ago? To NCsoft that was the glory days when bots had not yet infested the server. You can see people seeling the candies with 90k 80k, sometime even 70k in their personal store. Sometime thousands of them together. They are the whales, NCsoft's ideal customers. If we calculate the price of Quna, we see that the lowest price you can get is 12k Quna for 250$, 48 Quna for 1$. This is a very important number because whatever the gold seller are selling, this is their ceiling price. At this moment, NCsoft are the only kinah seller and they are slling them fast. I am geniusly curious how much of the Aion classic revenue are coming from just selling those tiger candies for the first 3 months. My guess will be over 75%. *People were complaining about in game inflation and P2W, but NCsoft didn't care because they were the only people that can sell kinah so they continue. Part 2. Incompetency This is a fact that no one can deny at this point. It took them literal months to fix the HP on upper fortress gate and Dux. They litearlly destroyed the game by themself. This turned away a lot of the the hardcore players including the whales. After that incident you see significantly less people selling the tiger candies in significatly less quantity. This is a huge cut to the aion classic revenue because that is the only consumable in their Quna shop that is desired by the player in large quantities. This plus the surge of botters mean buying kinah from the Quna shop is no longer economically sounds. The faction balance in each servers (before merge) are also extremely imbalance. All these problems compounds together which causes alot of trouble for aion classic's revenue. People are complaining on forum all day because of the in game inflation and NCsoft couldn't care less about it. The game is in such bad state that I don't think any management will agree to hire more people to maintain this game(including catching bots). *NCsoft want to milk this game to death and they almost did it. Part 3. Thing they did right to keep this game afloat Luckily for them, they pushed 1.5 out and people have more content to do. This relieves the issue of dimishing population -> slightly more revenue from siels aura and deava pass Then they start to sell reset scrolls. This allows people to farm more fort instance/DC/TL/DP which is a welcome change for the hardcore players. I would even say that NCsoft made the mistake to not milk this even more by selling the DP timestone -> higher demand in Quna They came up with Event pass that contains lot of high demands items such as relics and enchantment stone. This open another source of revenue for them to aim at hardcore players All these are good moves to keep this game alive and they are good in ways they all have limits. The most you can get from event pass are what's in there. The most you can farm instant is 24hr a day. These are good moves. *NCsoft saved the game, temporarily. Part 4. GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED But why settle for 1$ if you can milk 2$ from the players. The majorirty of their income in the earlier days were from whales. There are only so many reset scrolls the whales can buy and run. Only couple account they can unlock all level with Quna the first day it drops. NCsoft want to milk the Whale and they want it right now. Now we establish their goal and their history of doing it. We can follow their logic to see why they suddenly want to deal with botter with more drastic measure. *If the botter can sell kinah at lower price than the Quna shop, the whales aren't going to be paying NCsoft. To make whale buy kinah from Quna shop again here are the things that NCsoft need to achieve. 1. Push the kinah price on the market higher. Simple supply and demand question, if there are less kinah in the game, kinah will go for higher price. 2. Make sure that they are the only one that can sell kinah 3. Making sure that whales have place to sunk the kinah Point 1 is achieved through making drop rate on mobs exteremely low. If we look at the pure kinah inflow in this game, we see alot components Supply = Selling candy + Kinah drop from mobs + kinah from selling drops from mobs + quest + siege rewards (last two are basically 0) Kinah Sink = Soul sickness + broker fee + crafting material from NPC + traveling + consumable (kisks, powershards etc.) Their goal is to increase the % of selling candies so dropping rate being lower is the perfect solution. They don't ban bots to make the game economy more stable, they ban it so the total kinah supply is lower, the praise you give them for dealing with bot problem is just side effect they couldn't care less about. Point 2 is achieved through actually banning the bots. Normal player like me don't know and don't have a channel to sell the kinah even if they have. Botters are NCsoft's direct competitor. Point 3 will be ongoing. Trust me they are going to start selling BT reset scroll within next 8 weeks. The team can't wait longer else the KPI will look bad. This means more gears drop, more gear to enchant and higher demand in Kinah. My only problem with BS they are doing is the lowering of drop rate even in instance. If they think making open world void of drop will stop the botters because they can't do instance then at least put drops inside instance so normal players can get kinah from it. I farmed Udas solo for exp 4 times, all of the drop can't even reach the daily kinah cap and I kill almost 200 of elites mobs. Only the humanoid mob in there drop kinah and each one is roughly 10k so each run I barely make 2mil SOLO. This post is inspired by their newest candy Charming Pink Tiger Candy in the Quna shop. It clearly shows you what NCsoft is thinking. If this is the best way you can think to keep this game alive, maybe take some advice from the players. 1.Start selling BT scrolls, people still want the gears that drop from there. This is ok because BT is still time consuming. 2. Sell the pet from last deava pass as it is the only source of balaur mat. You can keep the drop on the instance boss but have limited pet food quantity weekly. 3.FIX THE DAMN UPPER FORTRESS INSTANCE. Make another one where you can do without the entry item right beside the new version. Everything the same as the old one so people will buy reset scrolls on those. Sapphire medals are cheap enough that people will farm AP 24/7 if you start selling them again. 4.More skins, even the one you can borrow from retail will be good. Idk if you need permission from NCsoft Korea to do that, but that is something you definitely should do. Wardrobe is here for that exact reason. Conclusion: Whales are going to buy kinah no matter what but have you ever consider why they want to buy kinah? They want to have multiple set of gear which they need kinah to buy L/R, enchant, and socket. This means you can sell those thing in limited quantities such as making enchantment stone you get in event pass tradable or add back the manastone pack in the event pass. All of these are ways to capture more revenue but the way you eventually choose is to force everyone to whale so they can just play this game normally. If this is not incompentency, I don't know what is.
