Okay so...
Here is something I think will be able to help.
Not just keeping members, but gaining more...

Personally, I think the price to add tabs, or add pets to your part is a bit too um....
Unreasonable.

Now don't get me wrong, I can understand the whole...
'we want to make people pay to show them that
if they want more pets it will cost more to feed them,
so this is saying, 'if you can't afford the tab maybe you can't afford the pets'.
If thats the case...

BUT.... the rate in price that you have to pay is really ridiculous...

How is saying, 'If you can't afford 200k to buy a tab,
then you clearly can't afford a little over 12k to feed your pets' logical?
Really, the major gap between the two is tremendous and tells us nothing...
When I first came here, and saw that I had to pay such a steep amount I started to panic.

Like... 'Oh my god, does that mean it will go from this low price to
something overly steep if I have more pets to feed them?!!'

And even once you figure it out, its still a serious turn-off and downer...
Because you wanna keep having more and more babies and even if you can afford their food,
you can't afford the new tab.

Not to seem rude... but if this is a way to get people to say, 'screw gold scavenging'
and getting them to pay for diamonds to get another new stable its terrible...
Because its not even reasonable prices for those either!!
$50.00 for 1,000 diamonds?!
Thats food money! People have to work to make that kinda money...
And those that don't and are kids...
Unno... if I was a parent I would yell at my kid for asking for that much for a game...
Thats money people need to pay for food, rent, bills, ect.
And thats only enough for the worth of two stables...
Which once are filled will just end up with people stuck again...

I can understand offline money... it helps fund the site and the game...
But maybe lowering the price might help...
I've seen games where the most you have to pay is $20.00 for the most expensive...
maybe 30.
But you know... I would actually have no problem paying that much.

You would probably even get MORE people buying them since they are used for so much...
If the price for them wasn't so high...
You can't even trade them for the same amount of gold because its too insane.

To get 100 you have to give up 225k. Which is like... why?
Might as well just buy the new tab then pay that.
After all, you need 500 of them to buy a stable.

This may seem like a rant... but its more of a detailed explanation for my reasons...


Gold alone is such a chore because right now...
there REALLY isn't enough ways to get it.
And the ways you can, take too long...

On top of that, we still need it for stuff like potions, traps,
breeding, bidding, feeding our pets, ect.

How can we afford everything
and still have some left over to keep them healthy...
if all our gold is going on tabs... and adding more slots to our party...

For me... It almost makes me so depressed that I don't wanna play because...
Well... its very depressing trying to figure out how you will be able to get your
pets from the hatchery and find a place for them in your stables in time...
And then you may have to sell ones you liked to make room...
Because you're so worried about your babies running away...

On top of that, you worry about how you will be able to feed them all
after you just got done expanding...
And then the events come up and you REALLY want event pets but have no room...
Its all just... really stressing....
When a game becomes more of a stress then it is fun... you stop wanting to play...


Now, I like your game... it IS fun and I enjoy it when things aren't troublesome and stressful.


For people just starting up, I think you should also go a bit easy on them...
For the first slot of the party that you buy, and the first tab...
I feel it should be REALLY cheap since they are new...
Also, it seemed like the first party add thing seemed like it was part of the intro...
In games, thats normally the cheapest because the intro is there to help those just starting out.

Its not really fair to make them pay an arm and a leg when they only just started playing...

For the tabs... make it fair...
If its gonna be a certain price to show you how much more you will have to pay for food...
Then may it SLIGHTLY more than what the food would be for premium food.
For the party adds...
Try not to make things super expensive right away or people won't play the story mode a lot.
If you want people to play the story mode, you're making it impossible...
I myself haven't even gotten past the Faerina Shrine boss because SUDDENLY...
Its six on two. Really? -.- I can't survive that with just two pets.

I understand you want people to have a challenge, but six on two is too much,
and I really can't even AFFORD to pay the upgrade for a third pet...
On top of that, six on three will already be hard enough when I do get it.
Two on three for the last boss was fine. I liked that.
But jumping from two vs three, to two vs SIX?
I'm sorry but thats too much...
Now that makes the EXTRA cost of trying to buy potions and revivals...
Which is IMPOSSIBLE to do when you have to afford everything else....

All around... the pricing is just a mess and makes it VERY hard...

I'm not sure just how many else agree with me on this, but...
I know well enough that I spoke with a few buddies of mine that don't play this game...
Buddies I was trying to get to join that won't even try it now...
And I wasn't even ranting about it...
Just telling them what I was trying to do IN the game...
And they thought it was too much....

So... just a tip if you want it...
I'm only one voice after all so...
Thats all I can do is just tell you what I think...
Thanks for taking the time to read this if you do...

I think you might be confused on the diamond prices. Buying 50.00 worth gets you 5000 diamonds, plus a bonus 1000. Diamonds are 500 for $5.00, and there are bonus tiers for buying large amounts at a time. So five dollars will get you a new stable, that's not so bad!

As for the tab prices, honestly at first I was a little flustered myself, but that was just because I hadn't really understood how to make money yet. I was just battling and catching pets. Once I got 5 mission pets together and started sending them on regular missions I made the gold super fast. There are several ways to make gold on sylestia, and while none of them will make you a millionaire on their own, doing a little of each really makes making gold easy. Missions especially, since all you have to do is click a couple buttons every few hours.

It was a bit overwhelming at first though, I agree. I think something that could really help is making an easy to find guide on gold sources for new players. I looked over the tips for newbies thread and while it mentions missions and quests an stuff, maybe it would be helpful to add a section specifically on gold earning help?

I agree with Ash, the guides are still a bit messy atm, there are a lot of useful ones but scattered throughout the forum! Usually it's from older players giving hints and tips to new players.

But as far as gold problem, from my point of view, you need to advance in the game, doing the main quest and battling. Gold making becomes easier that way, especially when you unlock the 5 tier missions from Sanctuary of Saerielle. Also by advancing in the game, you may start having surplus of gold, which is never a bad thing! You can start buying those avatar items you like so much, getting better equips for doing dungeon runs, upgrading stables, and many more!

One very important thing to keep in mind (in addition to what Ash said), is that this game is still not finished. Only 2 of the planned 10 regions are released. However, the price of Tabs and Stables will never change.

Once players have Level 250 pets and have 10 regions unlocked, the amount of gold they'll earn in a day will be probably 10x as much as what they can earn now. This will make affording Tabs trivial. And that's the point.

The more you play and the higher tier you are, the easier it is to obtain things. Essences will be easier to buy. Tabs will be easier to buy. Traps will be easier to buy. And that's your reward for investing the time to play through the game.

The only issue with that is that at this moment, there are only 2 regions available.


Edit: Also, the reason Stables can only be purchased with Diamonds is because saving pets in the database costs us money. We run a back up service for our database everyday in case something were to ever happen. Since we began in December until now, the price we pay for the service has increased almost 1000%. And that is almost entirely due to the addition of over 50,000 pets. The back up service will become very expensive down the road when say, we have a 1,000,000 pets in the game. So that is why we make Stables cost Diamonds.

While I totally understand the feeling of frustration when things appear to be way out of your gold price range... One should remember that these are things to be worked for; not handed out. Just spending a few days doing missions can get you enough gold to do more than you thought possible.

Even on my lazy days, I can net 100K from just sending my little guys on missions, and I ALWAYS make sure to send them when I'm going to bed on the longest ones possible, cause that means even more cash . I'm sitting on about 400K right now, which is lower than it could be because I'm going a little crazy buying equipment and inventory slots, more stables slots, etc.

In all honesty, the cash flow concept seems pretty well balanced so far.

If this is the reason than maybe lowering the prices temporarily is an idea. Make it so everybody can buy things NOW, not until the regions are all open.

For the loyal players who spend a lot of time playing it, it is frustrating (well maybe not all players, but I agree with Uchihariku and it is a thing that could and will scare people away.).

So for now, you could maybe, lower the prices, and then when the next region is up, you can make it a bit higer again. Or make it so that people can earn more gold now, and once the third region is up lower the gold of region 2 again. Something like that. So that people who play NOW also can get things easyer. I agree with you that it is rewarding for players to earn more gold as they go. That concept is good. BUt at the moment people simply can't move on and can't make much more gold. They are stuck at the place the game is. So maybe a beta version of optaining gold could be the solution untill the game is fully running.

Not trying to be rude or anything. I LOVE this game. You guys did an amazing job. I never liked online games in my life, this is the first one I actualy play and enjoy playing. But the gold/daimond thing is an ishue for poorer people and people who just want to make that one qitari but can't because they just cant buy an enhanced essence. (Th broker askes way to much gold the way the game is now, and daimonds are not afordable for everybody)

Thanks for taking the time to read either way!

Much appriciated.

Which really is not enough decent gold to buy enough daimonds in the trade broker while having gold left to feed/breed/quest and buy pets with.

I bolded for emphasis but.

This is economically unsound thinking. Unless what you're trying to say here is you are going to implement a method for users to reliably buy essences for a set amount of gold from, for example, some sort of NPC merchant, you're going to have inflation to match the rate at which gold is obtainable.

A Zolnixi Essence right now is 44,000 on the Broker. Say you release another two regions and our rate of gold increase doubles. Now why would I charge 44K for a Zolnixi essence when that's peanuts to me making 200K a day (use Daevoted's post as an example)? No, I'm going to raise my price and make it 88,000. The rate of gold increases, gold has less value, items cost more gold. 100 Diamonds -> 350,000 Gold. Say I paid for these Diamonds, with hard cash earned at my job, yeah I'm going to be nice and sell some of them off but why on earth would I sell them off for 350,000 when you can easily make 1mil a day? I'm not going to, it's a waste of my money and there's no benefit to me. I'm going to raise my price to 2mil for the same amount of Diamonds.

Now these are just really rough numbers, because I don't know what you have in mind for gold or essence buying, but based on what you've said you're not looking at a solution to the problem, you're looking at creating a much bigger problem of chronic inflation, which will only put users off more, and that's step one towards sites like this ending, when the only way you can play is by using the cash you earn because it's the only thing the site administrators regulate.

Now why on earth would I pay cash to a site that I absolutely must pay cold cash to continue progressing in, when I could take that same cash and give it somewhere else for endless progression? I'm not going to keep paying a mandatory 15.00 here to make any progression, when I could go drop 30 on a game of Pokemon and participate in that community, or drop 15 on World of Warcraft and have endless Pet Battles, and everything else the game entails, without any cash-based restrictions.

Yeah, it's unfair to compare a small site like this to big names like that, but when it comes down to the baseline cash amount, that's your competition. I have X amount of money to spend on online entertainment each month, and if I have to pick between a little bit of progression in this site, or all the progression I can sink my teeth into in WoW, I'm gong to pick WoW every time. And when gold becomes so devalued that it's meaningless, that's exactly the choice members are going to have to make.

And for that matter 5K is entirely too much for a trap that fails more often than it succeeds 8| But that's a personal grumbled only marginally related.

I suppose i don't entirely understand this, as I'm playing the game just fine without the use of diamonds other than vanity items (because I had spare paypal money gathering dust ). I don't HAVE to use them- why would you?

I suppose a thought would be to make this a pay to play site- such as Pony Island, where you pay for half a year or year. That's a pretty neat site to look at to get an idea what I'm talking about. It's booming .

I like Amberanime's idea of making things a bit lower for beginners, at least for this beta setting.
If the game's prices correlate to content, while there's not a lot of content and everything is just new, then it helps to be just a biiit easier since we're just getting started and looking for members. (If there is counter argument for the game being too easy by catering to beginners, then I can say there's a lot of content and ideas that over exceed challenges in the future to come to offset beginner help.)

It's hard to get a hold on what to do in the game, especially if you don't know what to do for the first few days. I won't lie that the community is REAL nice and helpful. Just that if you make it more of a hassle to be good at the game, it can be seen as frustration instead of motivation, and that can scare newbies away.

Edit: making Sylestia a pay to play game would probably scare lots of people away lol; ESP since content isn't finished. It's particularly lucky people are buying into the diamond features, me included, but if a line is crossed where gameplay can be cheated with diamonds, then it's not considered a fair game, but a pay to win game.

Also, didn't know PI was pay to play lolol. But it already has been around for ages, so I guess it can thrive like that.