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Big Changes on Imperian
Jeremy Saunders
Administrator Posts: 1,251 admin
Imperian’s activity has been slowing the last couple of years. Players have been transferring to the other IRE games. Retirement has allowed players to group together on larger games and is a behavior we expected.
Fear not, Imperian will never close as it costs us very little to keep the game running on our servers. Iron Realms has decided to make a significant change to some core systems in Imperian. The game will transition from a “Free to Play” game, to a “Free” game.
Imperian will turn off credit sales and transition to a completely free game over the next month. The game may occasionally offer items, such as phylacteries, for sale on the website. Sales will not be the norm and will likely only happen a couple of times per year. Characters will be able to generate credits and lessons from in-game activities. A tentative list of ways character may generate credits is below.
Imperian as a “Free” game is an exciting chance to try something new in Iron Realms. Most MUDs do not have the resources to provide servers, code, and support at the same level of Iron Realms. Imperian will continue to enjoy these benefits. Imperian can refrain from the time-consuming activity of designing and implementing promotional items. Development time will focus on the story and making improvements to the game.
Imperian will be looking for someone who would like to drive the story forward. I’ll be focusing more on IRE-wide matters, but I’ll still be here daily to take care of any issues or problems. Dec and Eoghan will continue developing the game world. Oversight of the game story will be overseen by Eoghan and myself. Our new person will be deciding which way to go, making the daily decisions, planning and running events. I will post more about this position in the next couple of days.
On August 1st we will set the retirement value of your character and it will no longer change. Characters will continue to be able to retire at any time after that point. Characters will not be able to increase retirement value by earning more credits. New characters will not be able to retire. Also, you will no longer be able to use retirement credits from other games on Imperian.
Here is a tentative list of how a character will be able to earn credits in Imperian.
Characters may gain BOUND credits for the following activities.
- Spawnwave Rewards: Up to 10 per day at diminishing returns per wave done
- Achievements: We will be changing many achievements to credit rewards
- Major Quests: 1 to 10 credits for completing major quests in the game
- Major Bosses: Reward credits when killing major bosses in the game
- Building and Guide Volunteers: We will be increasing payout here.
- Crafting Approvals: We will review the amounts.
- Help File Bounties: Credits for improving help files.
- No-Brainer Lesson and Credits: These will exist at a gold cost.
Characters may gain normal credits for the following activities.
- In-game Prizes: Admin will reward for gem hunts, events, arena contests, etc.
- Credit Auction: The game will periodically sell credits for gold.
- Credit Market: Will continue as currently designed.
- Organizations: These will generate credits in some way.
Comments
Fear not, Imperian will never close as it costs us very little to keep the game running on our servers.
How will the org generated credits work?
As long as this doesn't tank the dev speed of some needed changes (aspect/champ/obelisks/caravans/etc), then a big +1 from me.
And now because I didn't 100% quit Imperian before playing a new MUD, the character I have been playing, the time investment on her and the 150$ I've spent on her are now guaranteed to be valueless with the removal of the option of credit trades (my imperian, your aetolian)?
I dunno man. Great for Imperian to cut itself off as a revenue source but I'm still really annoyed as somebody who bought-in prior to this decision, and who has been punished for not ditching Imperian completely while patronizing IRE elsewhere.
Nevermind the fact that this is the ONLY month you're allowing people from other games to retire to Imperian? Why. Would. Anyone. Do. That? So if Imperian is successful and people prefer it, their money spent elsewhere in IRE is likewise useless? And they're supposed to make this decision based on ... ? Jeremy stepping away from Imperian? That's not reassuring. That's pretty cynical if you ask me.
Do you want us to have multiple characters in IRE or not? Retirement says 'no, one character', but these restrictions say, 'yes, value forced to be spread among many characters' while still requiring a gamble and/or operating within specific arbitrary rules that limit one's access.
I'm already taking a 50% loss on my time and money, and now it is guaranteed to be that exclusively. Let me access the investment I've made in Imperian on a different character.
Don't force me to take a 50% real-life financial loss while you gamble with Imperian's future playability.
Again: Why am I being punished for investing time and money into your company?
tldr: this effectively makes every dollar I've spent in Imperian worth 50 cents. And that's being extremely generous because credits are about to have zero real-life value. Oh, and I can only access the 50% money I've spent if I abandon the 150$ I've invested in a character elsewhere in your company.
And Imperian has nothing to offer me in return except an admission that they don't know what they're going to do with the game yet.
The problem with being incentivized to sell off my items is that it negatively impacts my desire to play overall because, well, I no longer have said items, and I may as well consider all my items that I bought on the market as worthless because who in their right mind would pay for them at a value that makes sense?
Speaking as someone who tested Imperian out just because of the 1000 credit bashing reward. I played for a while had a bit of fun then got bored and went back to other more active IRE games.
Free credits and being able to build my character without paying a lot is attractive. It could be something that draws me or others back to the game but it isn't something that is going to make me stick around.
I got bored playing because there the conflict system here is dull and it felt like not many people in the game took part in it.
I loved Imperian's bashing system. I loved doubloons but they are not enough to keep me interested if there is no active pvp.
Edit: Oh yeah, I guess you can sell some on the promo market and get a bunch of credits back on your character. Not sure that will make a huge difference though. I'll have to investigate.
But apparently the business model really did include many whales retiring (at 50% of staggering values like mine in some cases) and taking that hit. The announce itself even boldly says so:
"Imperian's activity has been slowing the last couple of years. Retirement has allowed players to group together on larger games and is a behavior we expected".
Players (including me) naively wanted retirement for entirely different reasons. "Regular" 50% retirement was supposed to be a way to retain customers who had already spent many thousands of dollars on one IRE game. Retirement meant that if they'd truly become tired of that game (which can happen even in a great, populated game at some point), but were interested in playing another IRE, that could become a realistic option. The player wins because they can play a new IRE in something like the fashion they're accustomed to without making the sort of investment very, very few people would ever make twice, and IRE wins because they will almost certainly get -some- further investment from that guy, and they retain an active player on one of their games.
The frustration of many players on this thread is that we are being left with two choices - continue to play a game that hasn't been viable for a long time and very well may never be again. And also a game that will ultimately be forced to devalue your financial investment within the context of that same game to boot. Or take a huge hit that, while, of course it's all perfectly "legal", also isn't something that is going to make any thinking customer feel confident buying any more IRE credits. And when you're talking such huge purchases, confidence and trust should be absolutely central.
That said, I do like the idea of just gaining skillranks as you use the abilities, but I "think" most people would rather just make the decisions themselves there.
Unless I am totally misunderstanding you.
Sorry!