Lesson cost research

Abigail

Let's assume it takes 1750 lessons to trans a skill and 700 for miniskills.

Generally, to be able to become a fighter worth a damn, you will want to trans all three of your guildskills, plus Survival. If you want to stretch it a little further, you'll want Antidotes, and maybe some investment in Tattoos, Weaponry and Perception (let's say Expert and assume 433 lessons to reach Expert) for their nifty benefits.

Some professions (knights, mages, rangers/amazons) may get away with just transing two guildskills, and you don't REALLY need every single thing stated above, so your mileage may vary on exactly what is needed/desired. This is just an estimate of the high-end costs.

Three guildskills: 5250

Survival: 1750

Antidotes: 700

Tertiary skills: 1300

Total: 9000

So, using very loose estimates, it takes about 9000 lessons to become an entry-level combatant (i.e. you are not flailing about and dying horribly due to lack of skills learned.)

A fresh noob at level 1 has 150 lessons. You get 5 lessons per level gained after that, and 100 bound credits from 10 to 70.

At level 80, you will have 1145 lessons to spend. This means that you'll need to obtain 7855 lessons through credits.

One credit can be converted into 8.5 lessons (assuming no prior conversion) and bound credits into 6 lessons. This means you will need 1310 bound credits or 924 whole credits.

Current credit prices on the market are 8,000-10,000 per, and it seems like you'd reasonably be able to get them in bulk for that much (or potentially less.) You will spend 7.4 million gold at the least, and 9.3 at the most. Or, you can shell out $300 for 1000 credits via the website.

For $25 a month, you can get Iron Elite, and obtain 1260+(30m) bound credits worth of lessons per month (5 lessons a day, 100 bound credits a month, 5 bound credits extra for each month after that, 60 credits for selling two tokens). Using this method it'd take you 6 months to get the lessons you need at a total cost of $150, plus you'll have a pretty nifty XP bonus to go along with it.

So, if you're looking to be a badass, grab an Iron Elite membership and play half a year. It is statistically worth it!

Abigail

You'll need 5250 lessons, or 875 bound or 618 whole credits, to tri-trans a single profession.

To omni-trans you'll need (15750)+(5250x)+(4900) lessons where x is the amount of professions you'll want to learn. This isn't counting shared skills (i.e. templar and runeguard, renegade and assassin, deathknight and diabolist.)

AM has 7 professions (ranger+amazon have identical skillsets), magick and demonic have 6. So that's 52150 for M/D and 57400 for AM.

You will need 3900 credits ( (25900-8500)/6)+1000 ) to omnitrans with one profession and 8275 credits to omnitrans with 6.

Lionas

I'm not sure if you know it exists, but this sort of information wouldn't be amiss on a page on the (player updated (and thus never updated)) Imperian wiki. Login credentials are the same as game and forum.

Menoch

Most guilds (like the Revenants) have lesson charts, and if you have the skill, AB SKILLNAME RANKS means you now have a very small amount of work to do to figure this out. If memory serves it's ~900cr to trans a skill.

Ellen

Menoch said:

If memory serves it's ~900cr to trans a skill.

I hope that was a typo or a mistake. All the major skills I have transed took ~290 credits, and that's assuming you don't have the 2.5 bonus lessons per credit.

Lalitana

The ~900cr figure is the approximation of how many credits you'd need to tri-trans your guild skills.

Alesud

There is also this thing.

Menoch

Typo, I hadn't had my coffee yet. What Lalitana said. 900cr for a prof, w/o bonus lessons.

Abigail

Menoch said:

Typo, I hadn't had my coffee yet. What Lalitana said. 900cr for a prof, w/o bonus lessons.

Abigail said:

You'll need 5250 lessons, or 875 bound or 618 whole credits, to tri-trans a single profession.

Delrayne

I'll post in this thread just say what I've always said. Bashing from 1-100 should net you enough lessons/credits to tri-trans your guild skills. Anything more can still be the money train. It's my belief that more people would be hooked into playing longer if they could tri-trans thus be more tempted to buy credits to become more viable in combat.

Dicene

Delrayne said:

I'll post in this thread just say what I've always said. Bashing from 1-100 should net you enough lessons/credits to tri-trans your guild skills. Anything more can still be the money train. It's my belief that more people would be hooked into playing longer if they could tri-trans thus be more tempted to buy credits to become more viable in combat.

I think tri-trans is a little much. I think having two of your guild skills transed would make sense though. Shouldn't be impossible to bash out enough gold for another trans if you're aspect and have some spare time on your hands.

Selthis

I had written this up at some point to email to Jeremy/IRE but will wordvomit it here.  Not really in the mood to worry about spell check and grammar checking today so take it for what it is. (Suck it Lio)

The biggest problem with IRE games and attracting and retaining new customers is the buy-in. IRE touts itself as free to play, which is entirely true.  However, to get to a competitive level and play, you either have to spend a significant amount (several hundred hours or more) of time doing the most boring thing in IRE: bashing or drop a couple hundred dollars.

The hobby is shrinking, and at this point you’re appealing to a niche.  It is time to look at ways to encourage people to stick with the game, even when they’re not the strongest.  To that end, I’m going to offer a few suggestions.  Some of them are my own, some of them I’ve heard other people mention before and they stuck with me.

1.  It should be entirely possible to earn the equivalent of one transcendent skill in lessons by leveling to 80 and a second transcendent skills by leveling to 100.

Based on my math, this works out to roughly 22 lessons a level  for 5-80 to equal about 1 trans skill, assuming all characters start out with 150 lessons at level 5 upon completing the intro.  For 80-100, obviously it would be approximately 88 lessons per level.

These could obviously award the equalized amount on a per level basis like normal or  instead continue to award 5 per level, except on the 0 levels (10, 20, 30, etc) it gives you the difference akin to something like neocredits or like the lesson rewards for some achievements as they exist in Imperian. These would obviously be automatically bound to the specific character and thus don’t benefit from the 2.5 lesson binding bonus.

I know this seems like a lot to give away for free, however this encourages people to be out doing things, be it hunting, questing, PKing, fishing, whatever.  A busy world is a populated world.

The goal is to give every player their first taste for free other than the time investment to get the levels.  I’m all but positive in every IRE game this will put a player at an almost competitive level, but  not able to compete with those who have invested heavily and know what they are doing.

Positives:

• People have more incentive to hunt so the world feels more alive.
• People get a taste of being slightly better skilled.
• Still a timesink to get credits without buying them with cash, but less of one.
• More likely to get people out participating in conflict systems if they can actually be slightly more helpful than acting only as a meatshield..

Drawbacks:

• Rise of botting.  More checks for autobashing
• People feel like they missed out.  (Will we have to go back and award lessons retroactively?)
• Enough hunting areas to cover the increased hunting pressure?

2. Lesson packages available for cheap for characters 2 RL months and younger.

Basically, what if each character that was created new got access to a page for a 1 time lesson purchase that was even slightly more discounted than normal lesson packages.  I don’t remember the math offhand, but lets say lesson packages when they are offered are 30% off.  Make the newbie lesson packages 40-50% off.  Offer the lessons in a 1k/2/3k/4/5k packages and make it a one time purchase.

Again, the goal is accessibility.  And making it look like its cheap to get into the game.

3.  Lesson packages available year round for normal price.

Basically the goal the goal is to make those who want to buy in to buy skills able to do so cheaper.  Credits would still be able to be converted to lessons, it would just be less monetarily efficient to do so.  In addition, credits would obviously still be able to be sold in game via trades/credit market and used to purchase artifacts.

Abigail

As it stands, it's perfectly possible to get to the endgame without spending a single credit. If you want to do things like PVP or crafting, though, you need to pay, or grind endlessly.

I've never reached Aspect, though, so I have no idea how long it'd take to grind up 10 million gold as an Aspect (and I would enjoy knowing.)

However, I agree that you should be able to transcend at least one skill through leveling/achievements.

Aulani

During the last week of the bashing event I got ~600k gold.  That was of course bashing for probably 5-6 hours a day at least and not always in the most lucrative areas. (Hunter squishiness ftl) And no corpse turn-ins (Endless black hole that is Flame belief) But I had fortune favour up constantly. Not sure if anyone can give more accurate numbers.
I don't keep close track because I'm fairly sure it would make me sad, I just enjoy it when I have gold.

I think it would be very beneficial to be able to trans two skills by level 100. Especially with the way Guild skills seem to be being set up. Main bashing/pvp skill (Shapeshifting), utility skill(Pioneering), pure pvp skill(Supremacy).

People would feel more useful and want to participate in more things, and bashing up 100 credits to pick up a tradeskill/artifact/random other skill is more exciting then the grind to hit trans with your main bashing skill with your attack not being fully effective because of it.

Gurn

To be perfectly honest, giving away free credits and lessons like this wouldn't cause any loss in total revenue, I'd think. More players means more potential people who are willing to pay for credits or elite. If you're not already invested in the game, then it's hard to want to put money into it, but if the games gets you two trans skills(enough to participate in combat, especially shardfalls), then you're participating and wanting more, after being given a taste of what can be.

You'll still need that third trans skill, antidotes, survival, and the like to participate at any competitive level in PvP. You'll still want some artifacts, maybe a statpack change. There's plenty of things that even veteran players of the game still want, which can be bashed towards like an endgame in other MMOs, or bought with cash. I know I still have five thousand artifacts I'm working towards, and I'm excited every time it approaches 20th of the month-- I get to open a phylactery, get two tokens, and more credits!

(seriously make phylacteries perma-purchasable a lot of us want to throw money at you guys)

I would even argue to have two tiers of Elite, one that's the current one, and another that's 5-10 dollars a month, with fewer bonuses. 25 bucks is a lot for some people, especially if Imperian is touted as F2P to begin with. 5 dollars? Pretty much anyone can afford that. I mean, just look at Runescape and how many people can afford membership there.

Micro-transactions are the new thing, and while Imperian doesn't have the population to necessarily make millions on smaller transactions, it will provide people incentive to buy more often if something's cheaper, I think, and once you spend any amount in a game you're likely to stay. Just a couple thoughts.

Delrayne

In my opinion, the first one is always free incentive (what up selthis :P) in IRE doesn't quite make it there in terms of enticing them to come back. To put it in a little more graphic terms, it's like offering to hotbox your friend rather than hook em up with a little baggy of their own. There needs to be that one more little thing to push them over the edge.

Like @Gurn said anyone who's spent ANY amount of money on this game is more willing to come back and keep playing. Most people just don't want to shell out a 50-100 bucks or even more than that when they don't fully understand all the mechanics of the game and what all they NEED to be competitive. So give them some smaller, less daunting(read hard to screw up) investments like lessons instead of credits so they can feel safer about what they are buying in terms of their character.

Veratyr

I think they should seriously consider moving the lessons gained per level from 5 to 10.

Mainly because I think if you change from 5 to the 22 or so lessons per level Selthis suggested, alot of players are going to cry foul, realizing that IRE just in essence gave newer players something for almost nothing when they payed good money or spent alot of time to get to where they are and what they have.

Going from 5  to 10 lessons, I think, isn't crippling or too much of a hand out to bring much angst to the older players. I mean, minus the bound credits, from 1-100 you get 500 lessons now, you get 1000 if you bump it up. 500 lessons is less than 100 credits, or approximately 20 dollars if you bought em from the website. Not a huge thing.

Iluv

I've spent a grip on this game and I'd be completely fine with new characters getting dual-trans from just bashing up to aspect. It'll get people coming back, new players staying more often and people developing different avenues for role-playing with alts. Overall would make for a better, more populated game which makes my investment in my character more worth while.

Menoch

Or make the lessons retroactive too. For people with omni trans what does it matter, except we get one more guy that apprentices wytch and gets runes/totems, or one more defiler to make/affix hazeward, etc, etc?

Lionas

Menoch said:

Or make the lessons retroactive too. For people with omni trans what does it matter, except we get one more guy that apprentices wytch and gets runes/totems, or one more defiler to make/affix hazeward, etc, etc?

Yeah, but what about the huge whores who already have all the professions and are only missing one tradeskill and oh my god what am I doing with my life.

Menoch

You can use your retroactive lesson gain to complete that tradeskill, and when you have leftovers, use them for proficiencies. When you have all those, you... classlead new weapons and tradeskills?

Lionas

Or I can switch circles and use the lessons to patch up my NEW professions.

(Dun dun dunnnnnn)

Menoch

Don't scare me like that tree-man.