Why does Ashes have embers in the cash shop?

So, Steven has said the doesn't like P2W, and I'm behind that.

I would like it if someone could help me find the answer why the cash shop is using Embers instead of real USD prices. Is there a specific reason for that?
It is my understanding that embers are a unique currency for the Cash shop that cannot be converted to gold.

If we're using Embers, which is already a red flag since it dissociates spending from real money, I would love if prices were set without any traps. I mean like selling 1k embers, and items cost 1200, so you have to buy 1500, and then you have 300 left, which oh, strange, buys nothing.

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Ludullu

Hailee wrote: »

Again who is forcing people to buy embers?

Oh wow you get extra when you make a purchase.

Just keep it for the next nice skin you see?

Noone is forcing people to spend money, JFC if this is the argument then it's simple: people need to exercise some personal responsibility.

You want me to be personally responsible?!!? Wtf is this bullshit?! I can't be personally responsible for the things that I do! I need the devs to always hold my hand, never give me anything more than what I paid for and then even tell me "don't buy more or you'll buy too much!". Though even that won't help cause I'm so deep into self-imposed desire to buy meaningless things that I have to be physically stopped by the game to prevent myself from buying things!! NO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!

CROW3

Just because you don’t understand pricing strategy, doesn’t make the ember currency & catalog ‘shady’.

Alternate currencies do two things really well:
- they abstract some of the connection (or for some all) to the actual dollar amount. It’s a simple cognitive tactic to help make money easier to spend. It’s Disney dollars, Chuck-E-Cheese coins, and casino chips.
- they isolate the spending power of a dollar to the company, giving the customer a unit of credit, while providing the business with immediate revenue

You’re also going to create a SKU pricing structure for items that is going to accomplish a few things:
1. Create a blend of small revenues that will aggregate as steady volume (I’m curious if Intrepid will go here) with larger mid ticket items folks will ‘save up for’
2. Create a ‘puzzle piece’ structure where the purchasable denomination and the item price aren’t symmetric. This creates overlaps for smaller items, which make it easier to justify purchasing the next denomination because you’re only covering the difference, not the entire price of an item.

These are pretty basic pricing models, and you interact with similar models hundreds of times a day, everyday. So let’s not burn witches out of ignorance, Goody Proctor.

JustVine

Noaani wrote: »

It is easier to set a price for items in embers, and then have the price of embers scale based on currency exchange rates, and inflation.

After checking with a professional on setting up these exact sort of systems you are right. It is definitely easier and will decrease their overhead and difficulty with coding their payment system. For those who are unfamiliar I linked their current policy[1] on paying subscriptions in embers in my sources cited below.

No matter how correct you are about it being easy though that doesn't change the fact that the way embers is currently set up (which is pretty traditional to all other mmos) is inherently manipulative and increases spending, no matter how 'pro consumer' they are. So let's lay down some basic facts and suppositions about Embers.

1. Embers is basically a gift card. It is there to capture your money into Intrepid's bank account directly on purchase. The moment you buy embers, IS gets your money and you can't spend that anywhere else or ask for a refund to exit the system because of some future pr disaster or just falling out of love with the game.
2. Gift cards have proven effects on increasing spending because they are separated from real money. They remove the 'pain' of purchasing from the act of purchasing the item. [2]
3. Currently you cannot buy only 1 ember. You must buy them in 'packs'. Unless IS standardizes their prices this will ultimately leave many customers in situations where they 'need to buy a whole other pack'. Different items WILL have different costs and 'packs' are inflexible relative to this problem.
4. It is not possible for Embers to represent prices at 1:1 if you start giving 'bonus' embers. This makes mental calculations significantly harder for the average person and make transactions less transparent. Now throw in something like 'stuff going on sale' and you have a completely opaque purchasing system.
5. The more opaque purchasing is, the greater the consumption [3][4]

Some of this is unavoidable, some of it is not. After all you can't really get around the foreign currency effect on purchasing distortion.[5] However, the more Intrepid makes things transparent, the more likely it is consumers will be able to more easily calculate their purchases. One possible solution? Having a quick reference chart displayed on the purchase page for embers for common cash shop items ember cost and the price of those embers relative to whatever currency(with a healthy dose of legal disclaimers) you have selected to pay for the embers is one such way IS can help ease the transparency of purchases.

Additionally if IS gives us a way to buy 1 ember rather than 'set packs' it will allow us to 'buy as much as we need and no further'. There are a large amount of benefits this would have in disrupting the manipulation posed by a 'pack only' system. It decreases the opaqueness of the purchase. It decreases the dissociation of pain from purchase. It also prevents the situation where you are eternally trapped in the system of 'in store credit' which compels people to want to capture that value over and over.

As things stand though, Embers are opaque and the 'bonus' they give distorts pricing calculations for the average consumer and are therefore 'only there for THEIR benefit'.

source:
[1] hiding the youtube link in a spoiler

https://youtu.be/zlcA95B122w?t=20m47s

[2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2008/09/credit-cash
[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1027444717586 (I know this requires a sub, so I'm providing an alt link for a different article that says the same thing but uses less rigorous reasoning and data scrutiny)
[4]https://www-2.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/transparency.pdf
[5]https://www.researchgate.net/figure/STUDY-5-CURRENCY-AND-COUNTRY-OF-RESIDENCE-INTERACTION_fig1_24099144
[6]https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2020/01/the-perils-of-in-game-currency/ A summary of some the research here in a much easier to read format.

insomnia

Amist wrote: »

Embers were used during the Apocalypse test to purchase battle pass levels and items from the store but as far as I know it has had no other use yet. It seems to be a sort of converted currency to be used in the store and I have not heard anything about it being that, as you have stated, cannot be converted to gold.

Edit: The battle pass levels didn't grant anything but cosmetic rewards.

They also granted Embers. So with a currency, the game can allow you to be able to gain some, through playing. I'm not saying it will. But the battlepass did

superhero6785

2 things:

Its much easier for currency conversion. You can set the price fixed in embers and you only have to adjust the price to purchase embers for various currencies around the world. Otherwise you would have to do a currency conversion for every currency on every item in the cash shop.

It also allows people to get "more bang for your buck" deals by spending $50 and getting bonus embers & holding on to them for later rather than just $10 for the one item you want right now. If you simply deposited $50 into your account this creates a dilemma where you now have $40 remaining and it becomes an accounting nightmare because different countries have different laws and since you haven't actually purchased anything yet Intrepid is acting more like a bank holding your money rather than have sold you a product. So instead you don't buy cosmetics with money. You buy embers and that is the extent of the real money transaction from an accounting and legal perspective. Everything else is now simply in game transactions.

Having a single in-game cash currency isn't a red flag. The problem is when you have several different types of currencies and conversions between them. This creates the convoluted mess of pay to win.

Dygz

Atama wrote: »

If you want to buy that starship, you can't just buy 2700 Zen. You can buy a 1000 Zen package and a 2000 Zen package for $30 total and get 3000 Zen. You buy your starship, but now you have 300 Zen sitting around. You don't want it to go to waste, so you think, what can I spend it on. Oh, there's this neat uniform that's 400 Zen. Okay, I almost have enough, let me spend $5 and get another 500 Zen. Now I have 900. I can buy that uniform, oh and I'll get another uniform also 400 Zen. I still have 100 Zen left. I'll just let that sit until next time. And so on.

That is bizarre.
Of course, I'm just going to let the extra 300 Zen sit around until the next time I want to purchase something.
How is the extra 300 Zen "going to waste" ???

JustVine

Definition: "go to waste: be unused or expended to no purpose." [1]

Facts: You can't spend it elsewhere. Until you make another purchase it is wasted money. Embers are not money, they are a credit on your account you can only spend on IS.[2] Your choices are therefore to accept it is lost or buy more packs of embers in order to make an additional purchase. There is no in between. It is either wasted or used

Humans hate loss and avoid it when they can.[3]

Speculation: Account balances like this are a manipulation to get you to spend more money by pushing on that desire to avoid loss.They don't have to be built that way. They could build them such that you can buy exactly the amount you need. But they don't. And why they don't is quiet clear to me at least.

Sources:

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go to waste
[2] https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Embers
[3] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion

ClintHardwood

JustVine wrote: »

Definition: "go to waste: be unused or expended to no purpose." [1]

Facts: You can't spend it elsewhere. Until you make another purchase it is wasted money. Embers are not money, they are a credit on your account you can only spend on IS.[2] Your choices are therefore to accept it is lost or buy more packs of embers in order to make an additional purchase. There is no in between. It is either wasted or used

Humans hate loss and avoid it when they can.[3]

Speculation: Account balances like this are a manipulation to get you to spend more money by pushing on that desire to avoid loss.They don't have to be built that way. They could build them such that you can buy exactly the amount you need. But they don't. And why they don't is quiet clear to me at least.

Sources:

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go to waste
[2] https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Embers
[3] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion

I don't agree with your use of loss aversion. Loss aversion implies someone is going to take something from you, meanwhile the excess embers remain on your character until you need them again for a future purchase. Loss aversion would be more like Nexon's premium currency NX, which disappears after 90 days of not being used. That is predatory.

CROW3

That’s one of the reasons gift cards in Ca have no legal expiration date.

Noaani

JustVine wrote: »

Speculation: Account balances like this are a manipulation to get you to spend more money by pushing on that desire to avoid loss.They don't have to be built that way. They could build them such that you can buy exactly the amount you need. But they don't. And why they don't is quiet clear to me at least.

I think this depends on a lot more than we would be able to speculate on right now.

If Intrepid put an item (or selection of items) up for around 50 embers (even if it is only available temporarily), that kind of kills any notion of them trying to manipulate players in to spending more money due to having an existing balance they may want to use.

JustVine

ClintHardwood wrote: »

JustVine wrote: »

Definition: "go to waste: be unused or expended to no purpose." [1]

Facts: You can't spend it elsewhere. Until you make another purchase it is wasted money. Embers are not money, they are a credit on your account you can only spend on IS.[2] Your choices are therefore to accept it is lost or buy more packs of embers in order to make an additional purchase. There is no in between. It is either wasted or used

Humans hate loss and avoid it when they can.[3]

Speculation: Account balances like this are a manipulation to get you to spend more money by pushing on that desire to avoid loss.They don't have to be built that way. They could build them such that you can buy exactly the amount you need. But they don't. And why they don't is quiet clear to me at least.

Sources:

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go to waste
[2] https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Embers
[3] https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion

I don't agree with your use of loss aversion. Loss aversion implies someone is going to take something from you, meanwhile the excess embers remain on your character until you need them again for a future purchase. Loss aversion would be more like Nexon's premium currency NX, which disappears after 90 days of not being used. That is predatory.

I don't agree that loss aversion is limited to temporal use cases, but I accept it as a fair criticism from you. The principle of loss aversion in psychology can apply to a lot of things.

Dygz

LMAO
Wasted is when it is never spent.
Your definition is like saying that money in the bank waiting to be spent is wasted money.
Which is absurd.

JustVine

You aren't alone in thinking economics is absurd. It is however, true.

Dygz

It's true that money in the bank is wasted money??

Jhoren

I would be a very happy man if Intrepid would allow us to simply type in the amount of Embers we wanted.

Nerror

Jhoren wrote: »

I would be a very happy man if Intrepid would allow us to simply type in the amount of Embers we wanted.

I would love this. Intrepid can still do their Ember packs and give percentages for bigger packs and black friday sales etc.

For example:
pack 1: 500 embers for $5
pack 2: 1500 embers for $13,99.

If a player needed 1700 embers they should be able to type that in for the same unit price as the nearest lower pack. Really basic math done on the fly on the website: $13.99/1500*1700=$15.86 for the 1700 embers.

It would give a clear signal to players that are sick and tired of greedy company practices like only selling currency packs that don't match what is sold in the store. A signal that says "Hey we are not like the other money-grubbing companies out there".

Noaani

Nerror wrote: »

Jhoren wrote: »

I would be a very happy man if Intrepid would allow us to simply type in the amount of Embers we wanted.

I would love this. Intrepid can still do their Ember packs and give percentages for bigger packs and black friday sales etc.

For example:
pack 1: 500 embers for $5
pack 2: 1500 embers for $13,99.

If a player needed 1700 embers they should be able to type that in for the same unit price as the nearest lower pack. Really basic math done on the fly on the website: $13.99/1500*1700=$15.86 for the 1700 embers.

It would give a clear signal to players that are sick and tired of greedy company practices like only selling currency packs that don't match what is sold in the store. A signal that says "Hey we are not like the other money-grubbing companies out there".

You know something else that would say this?

Lets say Intrepid want to sell a mount for $25, and so put it up for 2500 embers. If they have a pack that sells for $20 and gives you 2000 embers, but also gives you a 15% bonus (making it 2300), but they also have a $5 pack that gives you 500 with no bonus.

Thus, you spend the $25 they want for the mount, but have 300 embers left over to go towards what ever your next purchase is. That is a not greedy company to me.

While I would back the idea of being able to buy as many or as few embers in a transaction as possible, there is a major downside to this - transaction costs.

If they do this, they would NEED to hand those costs over to the purchaser, which since players can look at the above scenario and label it a bad thing from the company, people will without a doubt consider having to pay the transaction costs as a bad thing from the company.

I mean, if you could buy1 ember at a time, and Intrepid didn't hand those costs over, some disgruntled player with too much money (Steven, in Archeage) could literally sit there buying 1 ember over and over, and Intrepids costs would be significantly higher than the money they get. It would literally be a way to deplete Intrepids bank account.

This is why most games set the minimum purchase at $5 - transaction fees and exchange fees (when required) make even this amount barely worth it.

Nerror

So set a minimum ember amount that would ensure it didn't cost them anything. Problem solved.

Noaani

Nerror wrote: »

So set a minimum ember amount that would ensure it didn't cost them anything. Problem solved.

The problem with that is that people will still complain.

If you are the kind of person that would complain that you spent $25 to get a $25 mount, and you have 300 embers left over and that just isn't fair, then you will complain just as much if you only need 100 more embers but the lowest the stupid developers will let you buy is 500.

Basically, adding this functionality means a whole lot of work for Intrepid, in an attempt to eliminate complaints that it won't actually eliminate.

They are better off just having set packs, at set prices, that they can alter per region or currency, that they can set specials on if they wish, that they can alter the bonus of how they see fit.

yes, there will be complaints, but those people will complain anyway.

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