If the purpose is gold sink, the more gold is sink the better, but players are not stupid, they would only willingly sink their gold when the cost is lower using the suggested idea than it currently is (using plat eggs) so the maximum one can go for theoretically would be less than or equal to a ratio of about 1 plat : 160k gold. (For the calculation here we don't need to consider people who uses plat to speed up since the suggestion is using gold)
Who would have the gold to do this?
1.Poor and new players are immediately out of the table, so any argument using this is futile (@Gaurav, @Straef). If they are legit poor they can't even afford the full set of functional gear, it would be unwise to expect them to still have gold for this speed up thing.
2.Average players, they can definitely afford it, but I don't think they would want to waste their gold on this as I'm sure this would not be their main goal, if I'm average, I would rather save my gold and make more gold than to waste it on upgrades. No rush for it at all.
3.Rich players. Well this is the elephant in the room. Rich players who are plat players prolly don't give a shhet. Rich players who are non-plat players would be the one we are primarily targeting. And further they are the one with the most gold that are the largest contributors to inflation. Hence sinking their gold is the priority.
With the players side is settled, we need to know if sts is okay with it?
-Sts is okay with ads for 2 plat each to now cost gold (previously was free using ads). This means they never intended it to be compulsory to cost plat in the first place. They didn't lose anything by introducing this while at the same time this became a plus point to sinking gold.
-Plat eggs does not mean less plats purchase by plat players. This is meant for non-plat players who don't buy plats but need plats to do whatever they want like changing names, Insta leveling up pets etc. Plat players would continue to buy plats. Players who want immediate gold and not grind would also buy plats. Technically It doesn't hurt the plat sales because plat players won't buy plat eggs when their goal is to buy plat to get gold. Not using gold to buy plat. Plat players make gold using real life money. Non plat players make gold using their time and effort in game. You may say those that initially wanted to spend money to buy a bit of plat now have the choice not to, so how does this not hurt sales? Because it is insignificant, sts won't be living off these group of people. The game won't survive until today from this small purchase. It survived due to plat whales.
-Inventory, stash slots available for story token, orc tags etc because these items are the basic survival requirements for all players so if players can't even get these they won't even play the game long enough to want to spend on buying plats which is why also elixirs were made to be free for a long time and even now it costs really cheap for low levels like 500 gold for level 2 and a few thousand gold for level 10-40 ish, you can tell sts is not really relying or expecting much of its revenue to come from this
-so how about this new suggestion?
Would this suggestion hurt sts income?
Not an easy question to answer, this analysis would be a longer and deeper dive.
We first need to know: Who would initially buy plats on speeding up? (those that are using plat eggs wont be reducing sts income since they have no intention to buy plats anyway)
Mostly Plat Players.
Now with the gold option, would plat players choose to use gold and not plat?
Depends on
1.Which is cheaper.
2.Which is faster to obtain regardless of cost (gold or plat wise)
3.Which helps them to reasonably save their real life money without costing too much gold
For which is cheaper
Commonly used Plat to gold ratio is
1 plat: 24-30k gold
(for elite gem priced at 120k - 150k each)
(for crafting slots/Hotbars at 900k-1m each)
So obviously it costs at least 2 X more (or even higher using store items with better plat to gold conversion ratio) to use gold to speed things up following Gaurav suggested 1 plat to 50k gold ratio. Plat players would choose to use plat instead if their concern is gold cost.
In this case it doesn't affect sts plat revenue.
For which is faster to obtain regardless of cost
Gold is definitely faster & more hassle free method compared to using plat eggs or buying plats.
As long as the cost to speed up isn't too far off from those that can be used using plat eggs/buying plats.
So 1 plat to 50k gold (which is two times cheaper than plat eggs conversion) sounds like something even plat players would opt for despite knowing it may cost more gold wise.
When they chose to spend gold instead of buying plats, then yes, it does reduce sts income, though this reduction may be relatively insignificant compared to those spent on elite gems, lockeds, keys, auras etc.
Which helps them to reasonably save their real life money without costing too much gold
Some plat players who are already super rich may become non-plat players again, they have enough gold to waste, so this can become another instance where they chose to not buy plats to speed up and use gold option even though it is more expensive gold wise, at least they can save their real life gold.
Overall albeit not knowing the weight of each of the above factors, I would argue more rich "non-plat players" than rich "plat players" would use the gold speeding up option.
Which is good if our aim is to sink gold while at the same time not hurt sts income.
Bottom line, if this gold option for speeding up doesn't affect sts revenue/income as much, the main goal here would be to sink as much gold as possible from rich players. For this purpose, 1 plat: 50k gold may be too insignificant. We can make it slightly lower than the current cost range of 1 plat to 120k- 160k gold using plat eggs conversion. For simplicity and for maximum gold sink effect, I would propose 1 plat to 100k gold at least if this were to be implemented.
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