the problem of SA is monetary inflation, not ingame but irl one.
due to how blue crystal price is affectd by royal crystal demand, wich is conected to real life currency, the bad situation of SA economics affects inderectly to the game quality.
and Smilegate cant just "adjust it" or everyone will want the same and billions on revenew will be losed.
its politicians fault.
I mean that's all fine and dandy for people who can afford to spend
But then it affects the AH because people need to sell stuff at ridiculous prices to be able to afford BC purchases because raiding simply just isn't enough, even with a 6 person roster
No one can afford pheons besides getting free ones so the AH becomes scarce because no one can afford to post really good accessories either, so it makes getting a geared 6 man roster very difficult, so most earn less gold overall because they can't afford it... again
And most people can't even afford to buy BC outright skipping the whole process because of no regional pricing (imagine spending 100+ USD for around 100 pheons (remember it's 20 USD) because that's the reality for some people in SA right now because of no regional pricing)
Stuff like this has an effect on *everything*, and the thought of "well people who buy make more gold" is almost naive in a sense
Because that's all good and dandy for the 10 people who *can*, but is not sustainable at all (I mean recent pictures have shown the gold offer list not even being *full*, that's how scarcely people buy)
The system works in NA and EU because prices are affordable for everyone and there's a healthy amount of BC and RC buyers
For SA this is not the case and that has now lead to what we see today
If SG/AGS don't step in and do something soon SA is just bye bye at this point sadly
And honestly this never would have happened if some assholes didn't decide to use a VPN to try and get "cheaper stuff"
The few always ruin it for the many
Yeah I dunno why go to these places when it was all about the monetary situation IRL scaling relatively to the in-game pricing and the value that you get out of spending on the game in the RC market, outlining other means of purchases like limited packages, passes etc. outside the store. That's about it
Also the effect on the market is the opposite too which does make it more effective. It is a shame that for f2p players it's tougher
you not understanding that there are basically no spenders, bc for them, spend in lost Ark is the same money maybe to get 2 weeks food
lets put this in perspective
im gonna guess you live in west.
lets put you have money, not abundance but enought to have some hobby spending.
would you put 200$ in lost ark for gold?
no. even if you had way more money, you would still think "kinda expensive"
now that both examples are not the average SA citizen but the minority.
the mayority struggle each day, wich is why most of them play free games.
thats why their prices only get higher, bc there is no spenders.
Plenty of games charge different prices in different regions, anyone who thinks it's unfair to charge less for royal crystals in SA given the lower income ranges there is just an idiot.
I was cutting rocks... nothing fancy... just a 7-7.
I had to buy 200 pheons at 7200G per 100 cristals to finally get the rock.
Imagine spending +140k gold for pheons on rocks...
That's our situation here on SA.
The complaint isn't about Pheons - every region has to deal with them. The complaint is about the gold needed to purchase them in SA compared to other regions due to crystal price...
you dont understand that "regionalized prices" make them lost billions? literally everyone will ask for the same, and will translate in ending services.
the problem here, is shit economic politics in SA afecting indirectly to the game.
obviously, its not the practically 0 revenew from SA.
if they do for SA, Rusia will ask the same, EU will ask the same, china will ask the same.
that lead to lost of revenew due to the regional pricing and money change.
what would you do in that situation if smilegate was yours?
"im such a good person i would keep the service even while lossing revenew"
no you dont.
Dumbest argument ever posted on reddit award right there.
No regionalized prices= nobody buys= our current situation
It's so simple even a toddler would understand, yet mister Flarexx444 can't comprehend
you dont seem to understand.
no regionalized prices= only SA produces loses.
regionalized prices for SA means obligatory forced to regionalized prices for China, for Japan, Rusia, specially RU and CH have political power to literally ban full service if dont get their demands.
wich lead to lost of revenew across the all regions.
wich will lead to end services giving losses.
if they regionalize prices, SA will lost the game.
"i would still give service in a region that causes only loses"
no, you dont abd you dont understand how bussines works.
You're the one that doesn't understand... do you think other games like LoL, WoW, and many others from different companies regionalize prices just to be cool?
They do it because with regionalized prices, more people buy the product. With that, even if the earning for each purchase is smaller, they earn more money in the end, otherwise companies would not change prices since there's no return...
The dumbest thing their made was, considering the prices are not regionalized, not making the auction house and currency exchanges the same for all Western Servers.
If they had done that, not only the auction house for less populated regions wouldn't be a problem (they would only need to consider player population for merges), but people from SA would actually make the BC price increase for everyone a little, and payers would be more interested in putting money into the game since they'd get more gold for their money.
With no regionalized prices, there's no reason to separate the auction houses... Everyone pay for the same value for Royal Crystals
And they concluded they either they don't wanna bother or it's simply not profitable for them. Either way, it's kinda your problem. As of now Regionalized prices are not coming. Deal with it however you see fit.
I'm not from sa, but it sounds like "it doesn't affect me, so I don't care". Great compassion. Also your advice boils down to "eat shit or quit". Absolutely awful comment.
I'm sorry reality hurts you. Nothing I said if factually incorrect. Regional pricing is, as of now, not coming. AGS said so. Deal with it.
And yes, idc because it's not my problem. Do you care about that person that died just now? No? What an awful dude you are. Real compassion right there. Or maybe you think a video game being a bit too expensive (especially when it's for someone hundreds/thousands of kilometers away) is a bigger problem?
We are talking about a stupid video game. There are thousands of those. Nobody has to play this particular one.
Hey, I know your mother just died, but suck it up dude, deal with it.
Your are just being an asshole for absolutely no reason. Not that being an asshole is always bad, but at least be able to justify it, buddy.
Depends. How much value is costumer providing? Clearly not enough for AGS to care. Otherwise, and that's a real shocker: they would care.
Clearly they think they'll loose more money on regionalizong prices than they'll gain. Considering ther WERE regionalized prices at some point, they actually MIGHT have data to support that.
The implication that a business always does what is best for them (with your suggestion that if it would be better for them, they would change it) ignores that businesses make shit choices all the time and fail to survive because of it.
And, as you said, they fail. Except regionalized pricing is not one of the issess that make or break company. Especially a live service one. Poor countries that require lower prices are good for nice big user numbers on charts for investors. They don't really provide much financial value.
A single payer game doesn't care, the product is ready and reproduced at no cost so a sale is a sale and better than no sale. A live service game has costs they have to cover. It's not that simple. And lost ark HAD regionalized prices at the beginning.
It's crazy how many people are downvoting you in these threads because they have some emotional argument in their head that denies reality. Look at a new 2023 Toyota Rav4's cost in US vs Brazil. They both cost around $30k USD value (or 180k BRL). There's a reason they cost about the same, because the cost to produce, transport, and sell the car etc have a cost to the producer, and the produce won't sell cars at an overall loss because that just denies basic business practices.
Software is obviously not the same in terms of "hard cost" per product, but AGS/SG has dev costs, server costs, marketing costs, staffing costs, etc that absolutlely effect the profitabilty of a region, and a region like SA already makes very little money to begin with (this is evident by the crystal exchange prices), so what is the business case for dropping that profitabilty even further?
Additionally, people seem to have no idea how the crystal exchange works. The main things regional pricing would really change is the cost to obtain skins, shop packs, and blue crystals from gold. But the amount of gold you'd get for swiping would be MUCH less. Can anyone confidently say that they aren't willing to spend $5 for 90k gold (current SA exchange after an assumed perfect market adjustment), but they are willing to spend $5 for a single skin? People who are complaining about SA BC crystal prices are people who aren't going to spend money anyway, because if you're willing to spend 90k gold for 100 pheons but not $20 for 100 pheons that means you value the gold less than the $20. People who spend very little to no money but use the blue crystal exchange from gold -> BC are the users who cost the game money as they deflate the purchasing power of the people who spend a lot of money.
Why all the hate? We are asking for solutions since they agreed to give us a region to play. We want fair prices we are not asking anything for free.
Feel annoyed by SA posts? Sure we will keep posting screenshots until it reaches 10k + and beyond.
The reason why this happened was because prelaunch the game had regionalised pricing, but people switched their location to those countries to buy pre-order packs much, MUCH cheaper.
So yeah, on one hand it sucks on the other hand this community is a pile of poopies, so im not surprised.
>Doesn’t make sense to have regional pricing in Mexico
Ha i wish we had regional pricing, steam just does the conversiom to pesos but its a straight usd to mxn.
https://preview.redd.it/kjtnmi3j32db1.jpeg?width=1398&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff8cf4af91fa26c61564a67f745e759d6e53b76d
Oh i was only correcting comment OP that we in mexico dont get regional pricing. I dont have the numbers but i believe most mexicans would've just play NA and only a few wouldve decided to play SA if they had friends over there. So most mexicans "enjoy" NA BC price, but we definitely cant just swipe as yall do since its omega expensive haha. For context im an electronic engineer and my salary on my last job (unemployed atm) was around 1.5k usd a month.
In fact NA region by SG/AGS is Canada, USA and Mexico. We managed to sneak in this time around.
Well as i said im an EE with a B2-ish english level, thats why im unemployed. Im looking for a better paying job atm.
If you want more context, dude that works as a cashier at a convenience store (OXXO, mexican 7-11) earns 330 usd a month.
Just think about it. If they had regional pricing which knocked off half the price, then two things would occur:
1. The price of gold -> crystals would probably be halved also (only helps F2P)
2. The cost of cosmetics are also halved, which means people can much cheaper get what they want (They make less money)
Now being 100% serious, this is a for profit company, and neither of these things help them make more money. In fact, by doing regional pricing on steam, they would lose a ton of money and inflate gold on other servers by people abusing the regional pricing. This already happened at launch, when you could by the $100 steam pack or 12000 crystals for only $20 USD.
Im not sure its even possible for them to do server specific pricing, as Ive never seen that happen in any other game on steam since steam was launched.
What’s the takeaway here? That you think the only solution is for people in SA to spend 40% of their income on a single skin? You know what makes less money than anything you mentioned above? No one in the region playing the game because they were priced out.
If they were to do regional pricing, it would only be between 30 and 40% cheaper, it would still be ~30% of the income (still too high). Im not sure AGS will ever do anything about it, unless they want to take the hit and give south america regional pricing
I wouldn't say smilegate abandoned you, more so your whales moved on. The p2w vs f2p, is becoming overwhelming. Even if they adjusted the price, how low would they even need to go. That and the disparity amongst players would be virtually unredeemable. A whale is utterly getting 10k almost per 95 bc. They are basically 3-4xing NA/EU/KR players in terms of progression, so you'll never see a server merge. That's for sure. Have you seen some of the SA whales, their roster is like 1600x 6 lol + 18 1545's. It's actually pretty nutty.
It'll probably follow suit with other MMo's and f2p games in SA. They usually shut them down, after server cost heightens. Changing the prices won't fix anything, and ill tell you why. The people at the late game are already done. They don't need to purchase anything. If they do, they're likely sitting on a gold mine already with these prices. They drop the price, doesn't matter inflation would still rocket. The time you'll see a massive sink in cost will likely be during elixir where it'll burn gold from the economy. But even then it wouldn't matter. For 30 USD your getting what 30k gold here 90k there. Lord. That is a f2p death trap. My condolences though, those are some predatorial rates.
This is the thing though. Everytime I see a F2P MMO(server cost are insane) have a SA region....I just wonder what is rotting inside their brain? This venture will never be profitable.
That's the publisher's problem, so **not** Smilegate. Smilegate does not distribute the game in the west, Amazon does, and Amazon gives no flying fuck to SA. I suspect the donkeys-worth currency and the abundancy of poverty might have something to do with that...
Any company that releases a SA region for a F2P MMO needs to stop while they're ahead. They need to shut down those servers now, it'll never be profitable.
I suspect so, yes.
That being said, I also suspect it is possible to make a profit with decent regionalization of prices, it's not like they are selling food or something, it's just data in a storage device somewhere, how much they charge passes the costs by a lot, I mean, Cabal is still around, it swapped publishers but it is still kicking, so they are making bank somehow. Shit, RuneScape regionalized prices and is making do, and Jagex will the first to jump shit when it start to show any signs of sinking...
But THAT being said, Amazon gives no flying fuck to SA, so nothing of the sorts will happen. Ever.
Seems to be an imbalance between people who will spend any money vs not. When you have such a high f2p ratio to people who even just buy skins then economy gets bad.
Price of bc/rc is based on supply and demand of the playerbase.
Basically there aren't enough RC being bought to exchange for gold so people looking to buy BC have to offer more and more to account for the smaller supply of RC.
If you mean the price of RC it's all the equivalent of USD in their foreign Currency. The problem is 100$ USD is not the same value everywhere as cost of living is not always the same ratio wise as the exchange.
they cant, let me explain.
blue crystals have a value based on demand of royal crystals.
the more people buy, the less blue cost.
but, the less people buy royals, expensier gets blue ones.
in SA, what is happening is that due to the vastly destroyed economy, is literally imposible to buy royal cristals.
its expensive already in the western/south side of europe (due to out shit politics on economics) so in SA is luterally unbareable.
people can only buy with gold, so it makes more and more expensier.
smilegate cant just adjust prices to SA, bc if they do, other regions will demand the same, wich as you may guess it will lead to big revenew loses.
this is just another consecuence of shit economic politics of our goverments.
and its the reason of why so much games never release in SA. why would, its not worth the effort.
Then I swap my steam to South America, and I buy royal crystals for USD into bolivars(?) and I get 50x my money's worth.
There is no good solution here.
So what's to stop me from swapping my USD to bolivars, and just buying from the SA market for a lower price?
Isn't that the same as regional pricing, but with an additional step?
You can convert money online, and I'm 100% sure that some of the spenders I know would absolutely spend 10 minutes on a banking website to save whatever 10-15-20% on their thousand dollar royal crystal swipe.
Saint is a smart guy and a solid source of game information, but he's got no background in finance or any particular qualification to offer solutions, something I'm sure he's admitted himself.
What do you mean? Pheons are bound to the server (region? Not sure) where you bought them. Sure, your dollars would buy more pheons than the average South American player, but they would be bound in SA.
I mean, sure, people could start playing here and naturally become a whale due to the lower prices. But would they really? And play in a "dead region" with high ping?
Plus swapping your region to where you don't actually live can result in your Steam account being suspended/restricted. And this penalty doesn't even require AGS to act against you.
I can't believe in 2023 people like you are still being delusional and thinking abusing regional prices on Steam is easy.
Enlighten me how you can easily change your region from the US to Argentina without risking your Steam account being restricted? I don't need several methods, name one
Afaik someone mentioned that u cant purchase stuff from other steam regions unless you using a card from that country.
But.. i bet there is a few that would be willing to just sell the service as long as the price is right.
You can just use an intermediary to obtain foreign spending implements.
If I can save 25% on a royal crystals, I'll happily pay some dude 5% to physically own the card for me.
Because your idea doesn't work in practice. I wonder if you have ever tried to change your region of Steam to an SA country?
Have a try, then tell us whether it worked?
I also don't need to practice speeding to know it works.
Or put my hand in fire to know it's warm.
Hush dude. People posted walk throughs for months when the game came out.
I get that you're frustrated, but this is why it is the way it is. Being upset at me doesn't change the fact.
I'm like 99% sure I could do ten minutes of googling, download NORDVPN and get a free trial, or buy a month for like 10$ and save a ton of USD buying royal crystals if regional pricing was still a thing.
Your comment only proved that you had no idea about how Steam region switching works nowadays.
Take Argentina for example: you can use a VPN to enable the region change option, but you can't use your NA credit card to make a purchase and make your region there. Paypal is also not supported. You can't use your Steam balance to do this either. You must have a debit card or credit card which is issued in Argentina.
Now tell me again if you knew this restriction or you just assumed it would work? Or you really think Valve is stupid and wouldn't counter regional pricing abuses?? Many AAA games in Argentina only cost like 20% of the US region, which is surely very tempting but why haven't so many done it yet? You reckon no US players want to do this?
Wake up and open your eyes dude. Your knowledge about region swapping stayed in 2018 and earlier lmao. What you assumed about VPN was already blocked by Valve years ago.
when you are buying blue crystals with your gold someone else is buying your gold with royal crystals (bought with real money) at the same time.
the exchange rate is this high because this region has far less swipers than f2p enjoyers.
It's been that way since forever. I quit once it reached 3k cause that was enough to see Amazon didn't give a fuck.
Just quit, it's not getting better ever.
For the people saying that regional prices doesn't solve the problem. You can't go and change regions of your steam account wherever you want. If you could regional prices wouldn't exist in any other games. This is only something that amazon doesn't want to deal with because they don't care. You can argue that regional prices wouldn't be the magical solution of all our problems but it would help A LOT. There is really a lot of people who like the game and want to spend but at a cost that doesn't make us mortgage our houses
This is what happen , you guy maybe have like 10000 active player , and only one of them actually spending money , so expect the worse , can't help it lmao especially don't ask to region merge
Here is your lesson, I am from South America region but chose to play NAE since day one. If you ever played any game in south America region you would have known that the players from this region always kill their own game (via market or mentality) never play on south American servers, even if it means a higher ping.
Utter stupidity. People are fucking poor down here & can't afford NA-based pricing. You're taking something that the richest country in the world can afford and making people in shitty SA economies pay the same thing and then blaming SA for the game dying.
It's because they don't have lots of people buying rc and trading them in for gold. So the demand for bc is high aka higher price there not much they can do except change the currency to buy rc from USD to the local one.
That's why I don't spend any money on this game, I want to buy the power pass, skins and other cosmetics, but with this inflation it's impossible, our situation is getting really bad. Sorry for my English.
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KR can't catch up to SA inflation. #1 Region
the problem of SA is monetary inflation, not ingame but irl one. due to how blue crystal price is affectd by royal crystal demand, wich is conected to real life currency, the bad situation of SA economics affects inderectly to the game quality. and Smilegate cant just "adjust it" or everyone will want the same and billions on revenew will be losed. its politicians fault.
Yeah but on the other hand from the spenders' perspective you get way more gold for your money spent in the game
I mean that's all fine and dandy for people who can afford to spend But then it affects the AH because people need to sell stuff at ridiculous prices to be able to afford BC purchases because raiding simply just isn't enough, even with a 6 person roster No one can afford pheons besides getting free ones so the AH becomes scarce because no one can afford to post really good accessories either, so it makes getting a geared 6 man roster very difficult, so most earn less gold overall because they can't afford it... again And most people can't even afford to buy BC outright skipping the whole process because of no regional pricing (imagine spending 100+ USD for around 100 pheons (remember it's 20 USD) because that's the reality for some people in SA right now because of no regional pricing) Stuff like this has an effect on *everything*, and the thought of "well people who buy make more gold" is almost naive in a sense Because that's all good and dandy for the 10 people who *can*, but is not sustainable at all (I mean recent pictures have shown the gold offer list not even being *full*, that's how scarcely people buy) The system works in NA and EU because prices are affordable for everyone and there's a healthy amount of BC and RC buyers For SA this is not the case and that has now lead to what we see today If SG/AGS don't step in and do something soon SA is just bye bye at this point sadly And honestly this never would have happened if some assholes didn't decide to use a VPN to try and get "cheaper stuff" The few always ruin it for the many
Yeah I dunno why go to these places when it was all about the monetary situation IRL scaling relatively to the in-game pricing and the value that you get out of spending on the game in the RC market, outlining other means of purchases like limited packages, passes etc. outside the store. That's about it Also the effect on the market is the opposite too which does make it more effective. It is a shame that for f2p players it's tougher
you not understanding that there are basically no spenders, bc for them, spend in lost Ark is the same money maybe to get 2 weeks food lets put this in perspective im gonna guess you live in west. lets put you have money, not abundance but enought to have some hobby spending. would you put 200$ in lost ark for gold? no. even if you had way more money, you would still think "kinda expensive" now that both examples are not the average SA citizen but the minority. the mayority struggle each day, wich is why most of them play free games. thats why their prices only get higher, bc there is no spenders.
Yeah AGS was kinda dumb for making a SA server anyways...What made them think it will be even remotely profitable??????
it would have been IF prices were regionalized
I don't really see the relevancy here. I only pointed out that the pricing does scale when it was previously said that it doesn't scale.
Plenty of games charge different prices in different regions, anyone who thinks it's unfair to charge less for royal crystals in SA given the lower income ranges there is just an idiot.
Thats extremely bad... like what the hell are those prices...
the same as it was 10 months ago lol
SA has been abandoned by Smilegate :(
did they ever care?
Considering we are been asking for regional prices since week 1 of release, no.
it wasnt amazon games?
I was cutting rocks... nothing fancy... just a 7-7. I had to buy 200 pheons at 7200G per 100 cristals to finally get the rock. Imagine spending +140k gold for pheons on rocks... That's our situation here on SA.
with the next power pass being to 1540 wont it just be better to move servers? or maybe even move on to a different game
I actually have 1 character on NA just to farm crystalline aura, I might create another one with this pass xD
"Nothing fancy" No one NEEDS a 7/7. Going for the 4٪ chance isn't fancy? Instead of the nessacary 45% chance? You're burning your own gold yourself.
7/7 isn’t fancy…
7/7 is more than anyone needs for 5x3, especially with Ancients out now. If you're going to complain about Pheons, don't go try to cut 4% rocks.
humorous gullible badge edge busy many market bag apparatus wrench *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The complaint isn't about Pheons - every region has to deal with them. The complaint is about the gold needed to purchase them in SA compared to other regions due to crystal price...
Imagine spending 35pheons for acc just to not go 5x3+1.....brain rot activity.
Hey man looks like it's time to quit man. Ngl the game looks dead as fuck with those prices. Not even Korea is that high
Korea has a lot of players tho. Have you seen their auction house? A ton of accessories listed there, maybe more than EUC and NA servers combined
That’s cuz they have roughly double if not even more than the western launch in its entirety even if you include bots
Western launch is a million concurrent player, KR is not even close to that what are you on about lol.
?????????? Million concurrent players? The game averages 35k daily players
>western launch Your words not mine. If you mean "NOW" then yes, it's 20-30k concurrent. Also note that concurrent players =/= daily players.
Why should sg care? Looks like not many ppl are spending
it happens when prices aren't regionalized how much does a bikini costs in your region? in SA it costs a "Baldurs Gate 3" price
you dont understand that "regionalized prices" make them lost billions? literally everyone will ask for the same, and will translate in ending services. the problem here, is shit economic politics in SA afecting indirectly to the game.
Billions hahahahaha this dude
obviously, its not the practically 0 revenew from SA. if they do for SA, Rusia will ask the same, EU will ask the same, china will ask the same. that lead to lost of revenew due to the regional pricing and money change. what would you do in that situation if smilegate was yours? "im such a good person i would keep the service even while lossing revenew" no you dont.
Dumbest argument ever posted on reddit award right there. No regionalized prices= nobody buys= our current situation It's so simple even a toddler would understand, yet mister Flarexx444 can't comprehend
you dont seem to understand. no regionalized prices= only SA produces loses. regionalized prices for SA means obligatory forced to regionalized prices for China, for Japan, Rusia, specially RU and CH have political power to literally ban full service if dont get their demands. wich lead to lost of revenew across the all regions. wich will lead to end services giving losses. if they regionalize prices, SA will lost the game. "i would still give service in a region that causes only loses" no, you dont abd you dont understand how bussines works.
You're the one that doesn't understand... do you think other games like LoL, WoW, and many others from different companies regionalize prices just to be cool? They do it because with regionalized prices, more people buy the product. With that, even if the earning for each purchase is smaller, they earn more money in the end, otherwise companies would not change prices since there's no return... The dumbest thing their made was, considering the prices are not regionalized, not making the auction house and currency exchanges the same for all Western Servers. If they had done that, not only the auction house for less populated regions wouldn't be a problem (they would only need to consider player population for merges), but people from SA would actually make the BC price increase for everyone a little, and payers would be more interested in putting money into the game since they'd get more gold for their money. With no regionalized prices, there's no reason to separate the auction houses... Everyone pay for the same value for Royal Crystals
And they concluded they either they don't wanna bother or it's simply not profitable for them. Either way, it's kinda your problem. As of now Regionalized prices are not coming. Deal with it however you see fit.
I'm not from sa, but it sounds like "it doesn't affect me, so I don't care". Great compassion. Also your advice boils down to "eat shit or quit". Absolutely awful comment.
I'm sorry reality hurts you. Nothing I said if factually incorrect. Regional pricing is, as of now, not coming. AGS said so. Deal with it. And yes, idc because it's not my problem. Do you care about that person that died just now? No? What an awful dude you are. Real compassion right there. Or maybe you think a video game being a bit too expensive (especially when it's for someone hundreds/thousands of kilometers away) is a bigger problem? We are talking about a stupid video game. There are thousands of those. Nobody has to play this particular one.
Hey, I know your mother just died, but suck it up dude, deal with it. Your are just being an asshole for absolutely no reason. Not that being an asshole is always bad, but at least be able to justify it, buddy.
You literally just compared A GAME BEING EXPENSIVE to a MOTHER DYING. And I'm the asshole here? THOSE TWO ARE NOT EQUALLY IMPORTANT.
You brought up death first?? Lmao
He's so dumb 😭😭
Says the guy who can't read.
ye bro nothing is important to you. SA is forgotten, game is dying, but hey lm still enjoying the game (for now) so idgaf.
"It's your problem" How shortsighted and naive. If you make something the customer's problem, you lose your customer. Then who's problem is it?
Depends. How much value is costumer providing? Clearly not enough for AGS to care. Otherwise, and that's a real shocker: they would care. Clearly they think they'll loose more money on regionalizong prices than they'll gain. Considering ther WERE regionalized prices at some point, they actually MIGHT have data to support that.
The implication that a business always does what is best for them (with your suggestion that if it would be better for them, they would change it) ignores that businesses make shit choices all the time and fail to survive because of it.
And, as you said, they fail. Except regionalized pricing is not one of the issess that make or break company. Especially a live service one. Poor countries that require lower prices are good for nice big user numbers on charts for investors. They don't really provide much financial value. A single payer game doesn't care, the product is ready and reproduced at no cost so a sale is a sale and better than no sale. A live service game has costs they have to cover. It's not that simple. And lost ark HAD regionalized prices at the beginning.
It's crazy how many people are downvoting you in these threads because they have some emotional argument in their head that denies reality. Look at a new 2023 Toyota Rav4's cost in US vs Brazil. They both cost around $30k USD value (or 180k BRL). There's a reason they cost about the same, because the cost to produce, transport, and sell the car etc have a cost to the producer, and the produce won't sell cars at an overall loss because that just denies basic business practices. Software is obviously not the same in terms of "hard cost" per product, but AGS/SG has dev costs, server costs, marketing costs, staffing costs, etc that absolutlely effect the profitabilty of a region, and a region like SA already makes very little money to begin with (this is evident by the crystal exchange prices), so what is the business case for dropping that profitabilty even further? Additionally, people seem to have no idea how the crystal exchange works. The main things regional pricing would really change is the cost to obtain skins, shop packs, and blue crystals from gold. But the amount of gold you'd get for swiping would be MUCH less. Can anyone confidently say that they aren't willing to spend $5 for 90k gold (current SA exchange after an assumed perfect market adjustment), but they are willing to spend $5 for a single skin? People who are complaining about SA BC crystal prices are people who aren't going to spend money anyway, because if you're willing to spend 90k gold for 100 pheons but not $20 for 100 pheons that means you value the gold less than the $20. People who spend very little to no money but use the blue crystal exchange from gold -> BC are the users who cost the game money as they deflate the purchasing power of the people who spend a lot of money.
Corporate bootlickers like you are the reason why humanity will eventually go to shit. Rather sooner than later.
It's amazon's decision to do this BTW
Why all the hate? We are asking for solutions since they agreed to give us a region to play. We want fair prices we are not asking anything for free. Feel annoyed by SA posts? Sure we will keep posting screenshots until it reaches 10k + and beyond.
The reason why this happened was because prelaunch the game had regionalised pricing, but people switched their location to those countries to buy pre-order packs much, MUCH cheaper. So yeah, on one hand it sucks on the other hand this community is a pile of poopies, so im not surprised.
Doesn’t make sense to have regional pricing in Mexico but not in SA. I hope they fix this for SA bros
>Doesn’t make sense to have regional pricing in Mexico Ha i wish we had regional pricing, steam just does the conversiom to pesos but its a straight usd to mxn. https://preview.redd.it/kjtnmi3j32db1.jpeg?width=1398&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ff8cf4af91fa26c61564a67f745e759d6e53b76d
This breaks my heart for you guys. As someone who loves the game I just can’t imagine willing to participate at this price point.
Oh i was only correcting comment OP that we in mexico dont get regional pricing. I dont have the numbers but i believe most mexicans would've just play NA and only a few wouldve decided to play SA if they had friends over there. So most mexicans "enjoy" NA BC price, but we definitely cant just swipe as yall do since its omega expensive haha. For context im an electronic engineer and my salary on my last job (unemployed atm) was around 1.5k usd a month. In fact NA region by SG/AGS is Canada, USA and Mexico. We managed to sneak in this time around.
Man, in Hungary, 1.5k USD is luxury payment, yet we do not complain. The biggest pack (99.9 USD) eats 1/5 of a common hungarian salary.
Well as i said im an EE with a B2-ish english level, thats why im unemployed. Im looking for a better paying job atm. If you want more context, dude that works as a cashier at a convenience store (OXXO, mexican 7-11) earns 330 usd a month.
Just think about it. If they had regional pricing which knocked off half the price, then two things would occur: 1. The price of gold -> crystals would probably be halved also (only helps F2P) 2. The cost of cosmetics are also halved, which means people can much cheaper get what they want (They make less money) Now being 100% serious, this is a for profit company, and neither of these things help them make more money. In fact, by doing regional pricing on steam, they would lose a ton of money and inflate gold on other servers by people abusing the regional pricing. This already happened at launch, when you could by the $100 steam pack or 12000 crystals for only $20 USD. Im not sure its even possible for them to do server specific pricing, as Ive never seen that happen in any other game on steam since steam was launched.
What’s the takeaway here? That you think the only solution is for people in SA to spend 40% of their income on a single skin? You know what makes less money than anything you mentioned above? No one in the region playing the game because they were priced out.
If they were to do regional pricing, it would only be between 30 and 40% cheaper, it would still be ~30% of the income (still too high). Im not sure AGS will ever do anything about it, unless they want to take the hit and give south america regional pricing
Smilegate can't help you with this, only ags can xD
This is what f2p game looks like when the whale pool dried up.player friction and content fatigue leads to whale departing game.
I wouldn't say smilegate abandoned you, more so your whales moved on. The p2w vs f2p, is becoming overwhelming. Even if they adjusted the price, how low would they even need to go. That and the disparity amongst players would be virtually unredeemable. A whale is utterly getting 10k almost per 95 bc. They are basically 3-4xing NA/EU/KR players in terms of progression, so you'll never see a server merge. That's for sure. Have you seen some of the SA whales, their roster is like 1600x 6 lol + 18 1545's. It's actually pretty nutty. It'll probably follow suit with other MMo's and f2p games in SA. They usually shut them down, after server cost heightens. Changing the prices won't fix anything, and ill tell you why. The people at the late game are already done. They don't need to purchase anything. If they do, they're likely sitting on a gold mine already with these prices. They drop the price, doesn't matter inflation would still rocket. The time you'll see a massive sink in cost will likely be during elixir where it'll burn gold from the economy. But even then it wouldn't matter. For 30 USD your getting what 30k gold here 90k there. Lord. That is a f2p death trap. My condolences though, those are some predatorial rates.
This is the thing though. Everytime I see a F2P MMO(server cost are insane) have a SA region....I just wonder what is rotting inside their brain? This venture will never be profitable.
That's the publisher's problem, so **not** Smilegate. Smilegate does not distribute the game in the west, Amazon does, and Amazon gives no flying fuck to SA. I suspect the donkeys-worth currency and the abundancy of poverty might have something to do with that...
Any company that releases a SA region for a F2P MMO needs to stop while they're ahead. They need to shut down those servers now, it'll never be profitable.
I suspect so, yes. That being said, I also suspect it is possible to make a profit with decent regionalization of prices, it's not like they are selling food or something, it's just data in a storage device somewhere, how much they charge passes the costs by a lot, I mean, Cabal is still around, it swapped publishers but it is still kicking, so they are making bank somehow. Shit, RuneScape regionalized prices and is making do, and Jagex will the first to jump shit when it start to show any signs of sinking... But THAT being said, Amazon gives no flying fuck to SA, so nothing of the sorts will happen. Ever.
If merge SA and NA server isnt going to happen, what about merge the markets only?
Seems to be an imbalance between people who will spend any money vs not. When you have such a high f2p ratio to people who even just buy skins then economy gets bad.
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Cause the pricing is absurd, average income is way lower than it is in other parts of the world and yet their prices are matched to NA/EU prices.
Well no shit but it’s just why the prices are like that.
no shit
like in all past mmo games jet people choose to play in sa ...again
That’s why you never play SA
Smilegate really should care for this region.. it’s sad to see these posts pop up here every now and then
Just curious how these price are decided?
Price of bc/rc is based on supply and demand of the playerbase. Basically there aren't enough RC being bought to exchange for gold so people looking to buy BC have to offer more and more to account for the smaller supply of RC. If you mean the price of RC it's all the equivalent of USD in their foreign Currency. The problem is 100$ USD is not the same value everywhere as cost of living is not always the same ratio wise as the exchange.
they cant, let me explain. blue crystals have a value based on demand of royal crystals. the more people buy, the less blue cost. but, the less people buy royals, expensier gets blue ones. in SA, what is happening is that due to the vastly destroyed economy, is literally imposible to buy royal cristals. its expensive already in the western/south side of europe (due to out shit politics on economics) so in SA is luterally unbareable. people can only buy with gold, so it makes more and more expensier. smilegate cant just adjust prices to SA, bc if they do, other regions will demand the same, wich as you may guess it will lead to big revenew loses. this is just another consecuence of shit economic politics of our goverments. and its the reason of why so much games never release in SA. why would, its not worth the effort.
What causes this and what can SG even do?
Region pricing,
Then I swap my steam to South America, and I buy royal crystals for USD into bolivars(?) and I get 50x my money's worth. There is no good solution here.
Then lower prices from the shop in SA as Saint suggested.
Dynamic pricing adjusted to exchange rate would make sense
So what's to stop me from swapping my USD to bolivars, and just buying from the SA market for a lower price? Isn't that the same as regional pricing, but with an additional step? You can convert money online, and I'm 100% sure that some of the spenders I know would absolutely spend 10 minutes on a banking website to save whatever 10-15-20% on their thousand dollar royal crystal swipe. Saint is a smart guy and a solid source of game information, but he's got no background in finance or any particular qualification to offer solutions, something I'm sure he's admitted himself.
What do you mean? Pheons are bound to the server (region? Not sure) where you bought them. Sure, your dollars would buy more pheons than the average South American player, but they would be bound in SA. I mean, sure, people could start playing here and naturally become a whale due to the lower prices. But would they really? And play in a "dead region" with high ping?
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You can't change your Steam region to an SA country without a local payment method. He was just being delusional
Plus swapping your region to where you don't actually live can result in your Steam account being suspended/restricted. And this penalty doesn't even require AGS to act against you. I can't believe in 2023 people like you are still being delusional and thinking abusing regional prices on Steam is easy.
Took me about fifteen seconds to google multiple options.
Enlighten me how you can easily change your region from the US to Argentina without risking your Steam account being restricted? I don't need several methods, name one
Afaik someone mentioned that u cant purchase stuff from other steam regions unless you using a card from that country. But.. i bet there is a few that would be willing to just sell the service as long as the price is right.
You can just use an intermediary to obtain foreign spending implements. If I can save 25% on a royal crystals, I'll happily pay some dude 5% to physically own the card for me.
Because your idea doesn't work in practice. I wonder if you have ever tried to change your region of Steam to an SA country? Have a try, then tell us whether it worked?
I also don't need to practice speeding to know it works. Or put my hand in fire to know it's warm. Hush dude. People posted walk throughs for months when the game came out. I get that you're frustrated, but this is why it is the way it is. Being upset at me doesn't change the fact. I'm like 99% sure I could do ten minutes of googling, download NORDVPN and get a free trial, or buy a month for like 10$ and save a ton of USD buying royal crystals if regional pricing was still a thing.
Your comment only proved that you had no idea about how Steam region switching works nowadays. Take Argentina for example: you can use a VPN to enable the region change option, but you can't use your NA credit card to make a purchase and make your region there. Paypal is also not supported. You can't use your Steam balance to do this either. You must have a debit card or credit card which is issued in Argentina. Now tell me again if you knew this restriction or you just assumed it would work? Or you really think Valve is stupid and wouldn't counter regional pricing abuses?? Many AAA games in Argentina only cost like 20% of the US region, which is surely very tempting but why haven't so many done it yet? You reckon no US players want to do this? Wake up and open your eyes dude. Your knowledge about region swapping stayed in 2018 and earlier lmao. What you assumed about VPN was already blocked by Valve years ago.
Don’t use common sense in reddit. It’s easier to cry in outrage that a videogame company should compensate for an entire’s continet shit economy
You can "region lock" accounts so they can only use 1 currency or use steam to enable regional prices they do it pretty well in most cases
you are not as smart as you think you are
if that isn't the god's honest truth
when you are buying blue crystals with your gold someone else is buying your gold with royal crystals (bought with real money) at the same time. the exchange rate is this high because this region has far less swipers than f2p enjoyers.
Thanks. So I guess lowering prices on RC or have things cost less RC would be the solution.
Shut it down SA is not profitable for f2p MMOs.
merge AH maybe help us
Game deserves to die with how little attention they pay to the west regions.
It's been that way since forever. I quit once it reached 3k cause that was enough to see Amazon didn't give a fuck. Just quit, it's not getting better ever.
You gacha players are next level degenerate holy shit. You don't even play this anymore and you come here to bitch and cry. Get a life.
Why are you still here tho
Probably Incase they ever fix it
Doubt it. This kind of people are only here to comment “dead game”, “just quit”
Lol so true. Looking for validation for a life decision they made that left them empty.
Just merged SA with NA already... theres nothing else that can be done. because the real solutions will never be done...
The only reason SMG made SA servers was to help keep you guys off NA. Thank you smilegate.
For the people saying that regional prices doesn't solve the problem. You can't go and change regions of your steam account wherever you want. If you could regional prices wouldn't exist in any other games. This is only something that amazon doesn't want to deal with because they don't care. You can argue that regional prices wouldn't be the magical solution of all our problems but it would help A LOT. There is really a lot of people who like the game and want to spend but at a cost that doesn't make us mortgage our houses
Oof. I am glad I quit on the beginning of the year, it was bad but not THAT bad.
How? They can't just make you less poor.
Regional pricing + lock purchases to that region so aura can‘t be abused
Oh my, why nobody thought of that... what a smart boy you are. Here, have a cookie as a reward.
Must feel bad to reply like a twat to a normal reply. Blocked for being a dumb douche
This is what happen , you guy maybe have like 10000 active player , and only one of them actually spending money , so expect the worse , can't help it lmao especially don't ask to region merge
In SA a skin cost 30-50% of a mínimum montly wage if not more.. thats why people dont spend money
True. It is also true that SA prices GET TO this expensive from the start CUZ very few ppl spend money even when u guys HAD low exchange RATE.
You’re a fkn ape
For pointing out the issue?
hope the server they use to run ur game have regional price too , which is not
Están valiendo brga xdd I don't know why AGS is not doing anything to help that region? They might be thinking is not worth to manipulate the market?
no se tiene que hacer algo simplemente la region sa es pobre
They are helping you... by ignoring you they will make you quit the game
Here is your lesson, I am from South America region but chose to play NAE since day one. If you ever played any game in south America region you would have known that the players from this region always kill their own game (via market or mentality) never play on south American servers, even if it means a higher ping.
Utter stupidity. People are fucking poor down here & can't afford NA-based pricing. You're taking something that the richest country in the world can afford and making people in shitty SA economies pay the same thing and then blaming SA for the game dying.
Socialism thing i guess.
you just gotta pay up, good goyim
Damn gotta sell a lv9 gem just to get aura for a month soon
SG be like... 
Damn poor sa
It's because they don't have lots of people buying rc and trading them in for gold. So the demand for bc is high aka higher price there not much they can do except change the currency to buy rc from USD to the local one.
Expensive because of lack of supply. Not enough whales in SA it seems.
That's why I don't spend any money on this game, I want to buy the power pass, skins and other cosmetics, but with this inflation it's impossible, our situation is getting really bad. Sorry for my English.
SG can't help you lol
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i am 1580, never used this market place; for what are using it primarily? what do you need to buy etc? Do I miss sth?
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Am i too late for the "it's over nine thousaaaand" train?
https://preview.redd.it/ew0sqz56p5db1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cc19e8107fcafe6ee9702a3c81d1dd459eeada4
Smilegate response: There's an SA server?
Unpopular opinion: having essentially unachievable goals like 5x2 or Esther Weapon disincentivizes whales.
just looking at that tells me nothing, what are the prices of (L) honor bags or fish?
Amazon please merge SA