I've been playing the game now for several weeks, and increasingly I question how the economic sources and sinks in this game are working.
Resource generating units/structures which cost exponentially more to upgrade, but produce more at a much smaller exponent—in fact nearly linearly. This leads to a huge investment dilemma, and a major drag to having fun. For example, I'm still in the classical age, and my Caravan are level 7 (I have to move on to the medieval age to progress to level 8). The next upgrade, when I can do it, will cost 120000 food, but will only produce 150 more gold/hr (870 +150), farms are very similar but with complementary resources. At that level of resource generation, it will take 33 days to pay back the cost of the upgrade. Going from 6 to 7 cost was 70000 food, and increased the gold produced was 130 (740+130=870). That investment will take 22 days to pay for itself. Since it's only taken a week to go from 5's to 7's, I am realizing that I'm throwing money at a losing investment. They'll never pay for themselves in any meaningful way in the time frame for it to matter. I'll be super bored of the game by the time they do if self-generating income were my only source. Based on what my caravans and farms generate alone, I'd expect that it would take 2-3 months to upgrade everything to upgrade between classical and medieval ages. Yawn.
Clearly the game is meant to encourage raiding, and it makes the game pretty fun. That's great from a micro-economic standpoint, but someone, somewhere has to have generated those resources. And that's where I'm stuck. If resource generating units are so slow to repay investment let alone provide an economic boost (and grow slower at every upgrade), how is enough capital generated to drive the game economy forward so that people have fun playing it beyond early mid-game?
Theory for capitalization: In game purchase: Real life capital is exchanged for resources. Good theory and ideally what the game developers are after clearly, but the cost of resources in real dollars is also pretty steep. Current exchange is in the neighborhood of 1150 gold-food /crown, and crown/$ is around 120, so around $0.73/100kR. Supposing that the average player is spending $10 a month playing the game—that is only around 1.35M resources generated per person per month, or around 50k per day. That doesn't pay for much once beyond early classical age, and with cost growing exponentially, it's probably a total drop in the bucket in the Enlightenment Age, which would be a total turn off to most players. Even at $10/month I'd still be moving from classical to medieval ages in 1-2 months with my back-of-the envelope calculations.
If in-game purchase is the main source for resources (and there were no other external sources), it would probably weaken the gaming economy beyond the medieval ages at present prices, as there wouldn't be enough money generated by players. It would also create an environment where the progress is tied closely to the ability to pay. Rich players would become so much better than the normal paying or non-paying players that the game would become inherently classist. No one likes feeling like they have to pay absurd amounts to be competitive. IMO, in game purchase should be a time saver and a lubricant for progress, but not the source, and certainly not the means of competitiveness. Cost of resources to be purchased with in real money should be based on that nations ability to self-generate (i.e. crowns should be worth a fixed unit of time, not a fixed unit of resource value). Make $20 worth as much progress to a Iron Age nation as a Enlightenment Age nation in terms of time-saved.
Theory for capitalization: Zombies: The game generates new players who create kingdoms, build to a point, loose interest and leave. Their kingdoms are zombies, and generate income but stop consuming. I know I've run into a few kingdoms of this type when I raid and find no resources in markets and mills, but only in caravans, farms, and town centers. Still, for this to be economically viable as a source, they'd have to out-number active players significantly (like 10:1), and they'd have to be around for a long time to provide a real source (since to generate capital, an initial investment in infrastructure was still required). There may be some of this going on. It would be a bad sign for developers if it is proliferate though, as retention is key to monetization with the in-game purchase model. It's also not fun, IMO to constantly be battling zombies--they're totally asocial. I'd encourage Nexon to kill zombies (just remove them from the battle queue/league/standings/etc. after going inactive for some duration) for both these reasons--that they provide money to the game without sinking any and they're generally no fun to play against. It would be much more fun to make every player self-generate more resources than rely on zombie money. Fortunately, I don't seem to run into too many of these. Not enough to fund my economy, anyways.
Theory for capitalization: Attacking is its own reward: It's could be possible that the resources I get from a raid is more than I actually take from the people I attack. This would be a reasonable source of income, and a fun one at that, but given the amounts I'm getting compared to where kingdoms are in they’re in their development, I don't think this is being used as a source of cash, or it’s a small percentage boost at most.
Theory for capitalization: Cheating: There are multiple claims on various websites for hacking programs which claim to be able to arbitrarily add gold/food/crowns. I'm not one to cheat, and so I don't know of their efficacy (could just be a rouse to have you install malware), but this could explain the continued growth of empires at the upper echelon. I think to some degree this must be what is going on--there must be enough counterfeit money out there to substantially fund the rest of the game. This is my conjecture at least.
I'm having fun raiding at the moment, but I see that there is really no way to support the game that currently exists without large amounts of capital that must be coming from somewhere. I'm also continually disappointed by the lack of reward for economic upgrades, rewards for single player campaigns, rewards from league membership, cost of relatively marginal upgrades, etc. I don’t see this as a sustainable endeavor.
If cheating is the main source of capital (and it appears that it could be), then the game is a waste of time for the honest. Games can only remain fun if there are rules to which everyone is subject. For all I know, the absurdly growing cost of upgrades, and diminutive rewards elsewhere are the developers’ means of reigning in the market capitalization. If so, I hope that they fix it soon, as this is a Band-Aid, and a poor one at that. I would strongly suggest that the developers look at the global sources and sinks of money, and find a way to make self-generating cash-flows at least semi-viable for funding growth, eliminate cheating (particularly counterfeit money), and let the rewarding game mechanics shine in a way that everyone stays active and sees the benefit to throwing in more hard cash from time to time to speed up things a little.
Resource generating units/structures which cost exponentially more to upgrade, but produce more at a much smaller exponent—in fact nearly linearly. This leads to a huge investment dilemma, and a major drag to having fun. For example, I'm still in the classical age, and my Caravan are level 7 (I have to move on to the medieval age to progress to level 8). The next upgrade, when I can do it, will cost 120000 food, but will only produce 150 more gold/hr (870 +150), farms are very similar but with complementary resources. At that level of resource generation, it will take 33 days to pay back the cost of the upgrade. Going from 6 to 7 cost was 70000 food, and increased the gold produced was 130 (740+130=870). That investment will take 22 days to pay for itself. Since it's only taken a week to go from 5's to 7's, I am realizing that I'm throwing money at a losing investment. They'll never pay for themselves in any meaningful way in the time frame for it to matter. I'll be super bored of the game by the time they do if self-generating income were my only source. Based on what my caravans and farms generate alone, I'd expect that it would take 2-3 months to upgrade everything to upgrade between classical and medieval ages. Yawn.
Clearly the game is meant to encourage raiding, and it makes the game pretty fun. That's great from a micro-economic standpoint, but someone, somewhere has to have generated those resources. And that's where I'm stuck. If resource generating units are so slow to repay investment let alone provide an economic boost (and grow slower at every upgrade), how is enough capital generated to drive the game economy forward so that people have fun playing it beyond early mid-game?
Theory for capitalization: In game purchase: Real life capital is exchanged for resources. Good theory and ideally what the game developers are after clearly, but the cost of resources in real dollars is also pretty steep. Current exchange is in the neighborhood of 1150 gold-food /crown, and crown/$ is around 120, so around $0.73/100kR. Supposing that the average player is spending $10 a month playing the game—that is only around 1.35M resources generated per person per month, or around 50k per day. That doesn't pay for much once beyond early classical age, and with cost growing exponentially, it's probably a total drop in the bucket in the Enlightenment Age, which would be a total turn off to most players. Even at $10/month I'd still be moving from classical to medieval ages in 1-2 months with my back-of-the envelope calculations.
If in-game purchase is the main source for resources (and there were no other external sources), it would probably weaken the gaming economy beyond the medieval ages at present prices, as there wouldn't be enough money generated by players. It would also create an environment where the progress is tied closely to the ability to pay. Rich players would become so much better than the normal paying or non-paying players that the game would become inherently classist. No one likes feeling like they have to pay absurd amounts to be competitive. IMO, in game purchase should be a time saver and a lubricant for progress, but not the source, and certainly not the means of competitiveness. Cost of resources to be purchased with in real money should be based on that nations ability to self-generate (i.e. crowns should be worth a fixed unit of time, not a fixed unit of resource value). Make $20 worth as much progress to a Iron Age nation as a Enlightenment Age nation in terms of time-saved.
Theory for capitalization: Zombies: The game generates new players who create kingdoms, build to a point, loose interest and leave. Their kingdoms are zombies, and generate income but stop consuming. I know I've run into a few kingdoms of this type when I raid and find no resources in markets and mills, but only in caravans, farms, and town centers. Still, for this to be economically viable as a source, they'd have to out-number active players significantly (like 10:1), and they'd have to be around for a long time to provide a real source (since to generate capital, an initial investment in infrastructure was still required). There may be some of this going on. It would be a bad sign for developers if it is proliferate though, as retention is key to monetization with the in-game purchase model. It's also not fun, IMO to constantly be battling zombies--they're totally asocial. I'd encourage Nexon to kill zombies (just remove them from the battle queue/league/standings/etc. after going inactive for some duration) for both these reasons--that they provide money to the game without sinking any and they're generally no fun to play against. It would be much more fun to make every player self-generate more resources than rely on zombie money. Fortunately, I don't seem to run into too many of these. Not enough to fund my economy, anyways.
Theory for capitalization: Attacking is its own reward: It's could be possible that the resources I get from a raid is more than I actually take from the people I attack. This would be a reasonable source of income, and a fun one at that, but given the amounts I'm getting compared to where kingdoms are in they’re in their development, I don't think this is being used as a source of cash, or it’s a small percentage boost at most.
Theory for capitalization: Cheating: There are multiple claims on various websites for hacking programs which claim to be able to arbitrarily add gold/food/crowns. I'm not one to cheat, and so I don't know of their efficacy (could just be a rouse to have you install malware), but this could explain the continued growth of empires at the upper echelon. I think to some degree this must be what is going on--there must be enough counterfeit money out there to substantially fund the rest of the game. This is my conjecture at least.
I'm having fun raiding at the moment, but I see that there is really no way to support the game that currently exists without large amounts of capital that must be coming from somewhere. I'm also continually disappointed by the lack of reward for economic upgrades, rewards for single player campaigns, rewards from league membership, cost of relatively marginal upgrades, etc. I don’t see this as a sustainable endeavor.
If cheating is the main source of capital (and it appears that it could be), then the game is a waste of time for the honest. Games can only remain fun if there are rules to which everyone is subject. For all I know, the absurdly growing cost of upgrades, and diminutive rewards elsewhere are the developers’ means of reigning in the market capitalization. If so, I hope that they fix it soon, as this is a Band-Aid, and a poor one at that. I would strongly suggest that the developers look at the global sources and sinks of money, and find a way to make self-generating cash-flows at least semi-viable for funding growth, eliminate cheating (particularly counterfeit money), and let the rewarding game mechanics shine in a way that everyone stays active and sees the benefit to throwing in more hard cash from time to time to speed up things a little.
