The Argument: Why a “Four Ped Per Thousand” Price on Sweat is Exactly What We Need

Hello, Entropia Citizens,

Thank you for being patient with me while I got this blog out. The past few days got a little hectic out here in the real world.

Anyway, today I want to drill down and focus specifically on one of our projects: increasing the price of sweat. This seems to be the thing that’s making the biggest buzz around the community and I have been getting a lot of questions, so I thought it was time to sit back and explain my thoughts, reasons and plans. Without further ado, let's get to it.

Part One: The Price of Sweat Beyond "Just the Number"

The question I get the most is “why raise the price of sweat?” and the answer is more complex than it seems.

Before I get started in answering that question, I need to make an analogy that most people will disagree with, but I’ll explain: Entropia as a whole functions very similar to a casino.

In order to understand why I say this, its necessary to have a basic understanding of how a casino works.

Casinos will often times do something called “comping” a guest. Comping a guest, in short, is the process of providing a guest with free money in the hopes that this combined with a series of other strategic “gifts” will entice the player to stay, burn that money, and then some extra. Although it is possible to walk with what you have (sometimes), the casino wants to put a “why walk now?” attitude in your head in the hopes that you’ll burn that money. The more often casinos convince customers to stay, the better they typically do.

In Entropia, Sweat is your comp.

Like in Entropia, a Casino is free to walk into – but you can’t do much without money, so many times first time customers get a “comp card” with a few hundred bucks “on the house” to burn. Since the house usually wins, you burn that money and then a few extra bucks of your own on that “just one more round” mentality.

Suddenly, the house made money (not you) despite the fact that you were, just a few hours ago, a couple hundred dollars richer.

Sweat, in game, provides you with just enough income to “stay and play” without being able to withdraw and walk from it. That’s the goal of sweat in the game – to provide new players with a comp to allow them to play for free temporarily in hopes that the game hooks them, and then they ultimately deposit.

So why am I saying all of this?

Well, the “4 Ped” price wasn’t just a random number. It was very specifically chosen.

You see, MindArk is watching for "card counters". Of course, the house always needs to make money so that they can continue to keep their doors open – this is just a basic fact of the matter, and with that said, there is a limit to the “acceptable level” of the price sweat. If the price goes too high, MindArk has a problem. Conversely, the same can be said if it goes too low. The unfortunate reality is that raising the price too high would be problematic (and most likely corrected by MA directly).

How do I know this? Well, let’s take a look at the last several patches. As we all know, prior to the beginning of this project, sweat had been hitting record lows at 1.3 1.5 ped per k. As this has happened, low end player trade has come to a grinding halt while newer players have limited funds, and player retention has begun to suffer (I’ll get to player retention more in a minute).

So what did MindArk do? They released two patches. One made AFK sweating significantly less profitable by changing the way mobs interact with players, and the other allowed level 25 mobs to start spawning in areas otherwise protected by turrets and systematically scaring off players from major areas, like sweat zones and trade centers.

Interesting to think of that fun "Halloween Update", right?

Part Two: Trade, Comping and Player Retention

The ultimate goal of MindArk’s patches has been to drive down supply. By getting less sweat out on the market, the ultimate plan is to drive the price of sweat back up. From what I’ve seen, MindArk’s usual “we’ll stop interfering now” sweet spot is around 2.5 ped /k.

But this all begs the next question on our list: Why does MindArk care what sweat actually trades at?

Let’s go back to comping for a moment. Sweat is the only truly profitable mechanism in the game you can utilize without first expending money (Yes, I know there are others, but nothing quite like sweating). That being said, this is then the only system that will provide players with the “free to play” system, and is the only thing MindArk has to try and hook players to convince “On-The-Fence Depositors” to ultimately take the dive and put some money in the game.

Therefore, it’s important to MindArk that the sweat market doesn’t crash, as a crash of this market would mean a massive loss in player retention.

And Player retention isn’t just a short term problem.

Last year, MindArk made a massive advertising push for new players. A lot of money got invested into that push, only to find out that player retention rates didn’t go up as much as they had hoped.

As a result, in the “State of the Universe 2013” address,MindArk, for the first time, threatened to add premium, monthly accounts to the game.

Not good, right?

Therefore, What I see this recent “Patch push” to be is an experiment on the behalf of MindArk to see if the Sweat market is going to survive. Although premium accounts weren’t on the 2014 roadmap, I can bet that they’ll be on 2015 if the sweat market and trade continues to stay as it is.

Part Three: Our Plan

Keeping everything above in mind, after a lot of work with watching the market, our team has figured out that aiming for 4 ped / k in our project is the sweet spot right now to re-invigorate trade.

The plan that we’ve been formulating this year, called the “ERP Sweat” Plan in our office here, basically consists of three parts:

• Start buying sweat ourselves at 4 ped per k. This puts early pressure on other buyers and will give us the opportunity to help MindArk’s push by taking some bottles of sweat off the market.

• Convince sellers to begin selling higher. As the demand goes up, so will cost, and sellers can drive that along by raising prices now. Seller sets the price, not the buyer – and the fact that our market is buyer-set right now is part of the reason the market is struggling. We will encourage this by advertising players on this blog who sell above 3 ped / k as “Caring Sellers” who are working towards a better future for the game, among several other small advertising campaigns that are planned to help bolster the sales of those who are working towards keeping our trade high and our game free.

• Work with Big Sweating Corporations to temporarily place a stop sale on their wares. This will expedite the urgency of the demand, helping small-time sellers drive the price up. Alternatively, corporations could begin selling at 4 ped / k now. Although they won’t get any hits right away, corporations getting on board with this would be, in the long term, doing the game a service.

Part Four: What Does This All Mean For the Average Player?

The price of sweat is important beyond just player retention and the looming threat of premium accounts. It’s also important because it drives trade on the low-end and middle-market. Trade in these sectors has been slower than it’s ever been, and this is very negatively impacting the overall economy.

By raising the price of sweat, we’re driving the flow of money through the economy, which will in turn result in increased trade, and increased income across the board. The change may start at the bottom, but it will make its way through every level of the game.

Part Five: Conclusion

Although the price of sweat will be going up, exactly how much is up to us. I encourage everyone who reads this to work with me, and each other, on making a concerted effort to bring the price of sweat of. You may want to start by just asking above 2 ped for now… then slowly work your way up. However you choose to do it, increasing the price from 1.5 ped /k to 4 ped gives every seller the opportunity to put an extra 1200-1500 ped in their pocket over time. That’s nothing to sneeze at – and traders, imagine if those sellers re-invested 80% of that into their gaming. Multiply that over even just 200 players and imagine how much extra supply you would move.

As always, I will be on world this week to talk about the sweat price, and will continue to buy at 4 ped /k. I should also note that there are those who think that I will just eventually run out of cash and start buying low again – I assure you, that isn’t the case. I have been planning this movement for quite some time now, and ERP will be launching a series of other marketing and economical projects that will be used to offset the cost of this project. Therefore, I won’t be stopping any time soon – so the question is, when do the rest of us start working towards keeping the game free to play, and helping out ourselves by helping everyone else?

Good Luck, and Hunt Dangerously.

-Faucon

Image Credit Found Here