GMs giving up on silvers?

[Suppressed Poet]

Methais and Tgo01, I know you guys occasionally make a few bucks in profit here and there. Over the course of time since you started playing Gemstone, would you say that you have made more money than the sum of what you paid to Simu? Think I know the answer but I won’t assume.

My opinion is the game would collapse without OG super players like y’all holding it up. Just a hunch. Simutronics should be kissing your collective asses.

[Tgo01]

Methais and Tgo01, I know you guys occasionally make a few bucks in profit here and there. Over the course of time since you started playing Gemstone, would you say that you have made more money than the sum of what you paid to Simu? Think I know the answer but I won’t assume.

With the number of accounts I have these days I just barely break even. I mostly just enjoy building characters and pushing what I can do with my group via scripting and also writing scripts.

Sure I still enjoy the game because of the things I just mentioned, but it's not worth how much money I put into this game. I would probably drop my number of accounts down to 1 or 2 if the GMs manage to succeed in their apparent quest to make silvers totally worthless.

[Suppressed Poet]

With the number of accounts I have these days I just barely break even. I mostly just enjoy building characters and pushing what I can do with my group via scripting and also writing scripts.

Sure I still enjoy the game because of the things I just mentioned, but it's not worth how much money I put into this game. I would probably drop my number of accounts down to 1 or 2 if the GMs manage to succeed in their apparent quest to make silvers totally worthless.

As suspected, Simu should be kissing your ass.

Does David Whatley still own and run the company? I never met him. Maybe I don’t know all the ins and outs of running a MUDD, but it occurs to me with minimal effort & virtually 0 effort things could improve the game. Just sounds like there is little leadership from the top & some uninspired middle management type must be running things now. They didn’t really listen to the player base all that much when I was actively playing not that long ago & it sounds like it’s much worse now.

[Methais]

Methais and Tgo01, I know you guys occasionally make a few bucks in profit here and there. Over the course of time since you started playing Gemstone, would you say that you have made more money than the sum of what you paid to Simu? Think I know the answer but I won’t assume.

My opinion is the game would collapse without OG super players like y’all holding it up. Just a hunch. Simutronics should be kissing your collective asses.

I've made 945732890403x more from GS than I've paid into it. It's a fraction of what it used to be, but it's still there.

That said, I'd be totally ok with making $0 off of silvers if there was anything interesting to spend them on in game, and things like adding a few more points of padding/weighting aren't it.

But there isn't, for me anyway, so not selling them would just be dumb.

Half the time I don't even bother trying to sell wizard/cleric/bard services, which would add up to a decent pile of silvers on its own each month, because I'm too lazy being afk 99% of the time when I'm not out hunting. I'm an afk rester.

[Methais]

As suspected, Simu should be kissing your ass.

Does David Whatley still own and run the company? I never met him. Maybe I don’t know all the ins and outs of running a MUDD, but it occurs to me with minimal effort & virtually 0 effort things could improve the game. Just sounds like there is little leadership from the top & some uninspired middle management type must be running things now. They didn’t really listen to the player base all that much when I was actively playing not that long ago & it sounds like it’s much worse now.

I think Whatley's been gone for at least a year or two. I forgot what the deal was, but I'm pretty sure it's been years and years and years since he's done anything meaningful anyway.

I don't know much of shit about how things work behind the scenes, but I'd imagine it's a complete train wreck.

[Tgo01]

I think Simu is getting fat on a few whales who spend thousands of dollars at each event so they don't even seem to care about monthly subs anymore, which is all kinds of wrong in a type of business such as this.

Probably doesn't help that GMs get a slice of the pie at paid events, but as far as I'm aware they don't get a slice of the pie of monthly subs, so it just gives GMs even more incentive to focus on the whales and not the regular folk who just pay a monthly sub and that's it.

And the top dog who bought Simu probably only looks at dollar figures and looks at the chart with the arrow going up and thinking "Yup, this works. Great job!" If the numbers ever start going down the GMs probably just release more event shit, or shit like full spell up pills at the SimuCoin store.

The only reason they probably do event boxes anymore is not to give silvers a value, but because it gives away entries for "free" (free as in not real world money) and gets people into the idea of doing paid events which will in turn make them spend real life money for more entries.

[Suppressed Poet]

I've made 945732890403x more from GS than I've paid into it. It's a fraction of what it used to be, but it's still there.

That said, I'd be totally ok with making $0 off of silvers if there was anything interesting to spend them on in game, and things like adding a few more points of padding/weighting aren't it.

But there isn't, for me anyway, so not selling them would just be dumb.

Half the time I don't even bother trying to sell wizard/cleric/bard services, which would add up to a decent pile of silvers on its own each month, because I'm too lazy being afk 99% of the time when I'm not out hunting. I'm an afk rester.

That’s impressive over the long haul you made more from your services, silver collection, etc, than what you have paid Simu in subscription fees, events, etc. I wouldn’t have guessed that. I say good for you and hell yeah. The only way that happens is because you provide some sort of valuable service to the player community as evidenced by their willingness to pay you for it.

May I ask are your profit margins enough to provide a livable wage, even if it’s like the equivalent of Seran’s government EBT deposits? Or is the time/effort to profit ration like Diablo II item farming dominated by poor Asian countries, because the profits are only sustainable as a business if you live in 3rd world country with little economic opportunity?

[Suppressed Poet]

I think Whatley's been gone for at least a year or two. I forgot what the deal was, but I'm pretty sure it's been years and years and years since he's done anything meaningful anyway.

I don't know much of shit about how things work behind the scenes, but I'd imagine it's a complete train wreck.

I looked it up and found that a Swedish company called Stillfront Group purchased a 55% majority ownership stake in Simutronics back in 2016. It’s unclear who owns the other 45%.

Without going into details, I came across some money from an inheritance. I’ve parked it into a sensible low risk investment, but I’ve began to think…what if I took that money, used it for collateral to get a sizable loan, and started a business that I truly love & that could replace my current career? I keep thinking about that guy Cletus McFarland that put every cent he had into buying a dilapidated race track in 2020 & made something out of it. What would be my passion if I chose to do the same? Problem is I haven’t quite figured that out yet.

Or I could just continue the safe route of working a 9-5, put all my kids through college, and maybe be able to retire slightly early. Still undecided.

[Tgo01]

Want to increase your capped player services juice beyond 200k? Spend 1 million silvers and you can increase your capped juice by 1k.

Create a system similar to ascension but with silvers. 10 million silvers and you can increase any stat or skill by 1 point, with a cap of +10 to any stat/skill from this system.

Create some sort of charm system and you can buy various charms that give you different abilities. 25 million silvers allows you to buy a charm so you won't trip on any ice patches if you have at least 150 ranks of survival. 10 million silvers allows you to buy a charm that gives you slightly better loot.

Thinking about this some more, because I love to hear myself talk. The craziest thing is how easy it would be to implement this.

Just make all of this some sort of charm system. It doesn't even have to be a physical item, the charm is just part of your character description that you can customize (more way to drain silvers!) or even hide if you don't want it to show up on your character.

And stuff like the ascension system but for silvers I mentioned? The ascension system already exists, it wouldn't be too difficult to duplicate that code and have it use silvers instead of ascension experience.

Adding more total juice your character can have? The system already exists for character juice, it's just capped at 200k. Should be easy enough to code it so the game does 200,000 + (number of charm ranks * 1000). Bam. Done. Can even do this for weekly juice, but maybe make it cost more since this would speed up how fast players can perform services. And again this would be easy enough to code.

Slipping on ice patches? Simple. Have the code check if the current room has an ice patch, if yes then check if the person has at least 150 ranks of survival and if they have the no-slipping charm, if yes then the person doesn't slip, if not then check the current code for the formula on slipping or not.

This is such simple stuff. The GMs either A) Just don't give a shit or B) Don't want to give players more ways to advance their characters via silvers, and let's face it, it's probably B because they don't want these systems to potentially interfere with their paid events services.

[Realk]

Just make all of this some sort of charm system.


they just made the bards have the luck thing.. that would mess that up a little bit.


The promise of a game wide prize if enough accounts bought event boxes seemed lazy, as we've all seen with everyone buying them from other folks. That's not a silver drain it's a silver shuffle.