Is the Price Rise to Spell Research Reduction Reasonable?

Or you could just as easily let the research system work for you and just wait 60 days.

What it boils down to is that getting these new spells is going to cost you in either time (60 days of research OR days/weeks/months farming) or money (Plat OR Station Cash). You have to figure out which is the method that appeals to you.

For some they'll be happy to spend whatever the SC cost is and be done with it. For others, myself included, any amount of SC isn't worth the minimal boost in power that these spells deliver. I'm also not likely to spend a lot of time trying to farm for the masters, if I get them fine otherwise it's a minimal gain no big deal. So I'll just start the research thing going and get on with my life and in a couple of months I'll get a nice surprise when the little window pops up saying it's done.

By the way, 49sc x 60 days is 2940, not 4500

Members save another 294 on top of that and have the extra 500 sc coming in every month.

Obviously not a raider. I will be maintain two toons, my raid primary and raid alt toon. Those I'll buy the SC boost to fully grandmaster them right off the bat. Not sure what the cost will be but lets say 1800 SC dollars or $18.00 each. On average 10 to 15 spells per toon, so let's say 30 spells for my two toons. That comes out to $540.00, and I'm ok with that. When I look at that compared to the plat I will make for the master spells I find I think that's a good trade off, considering I'll be fully grandmastered, selling masters on the broker and haven't wasted months looking for those same 30 master spells.

Even if I was even remotely interested in spending that kind of money (hell no, I can buy some nice things for real with that) on most of my characters there really are only a couple abilities that are important to upgrade. Someone above mentioned the necro pet. That's a great example of a valuable one. So many of the abilities are marginal regardless of what tier of spell you have.

So what's your trick for converting gold to $$ to recoup your SC expenditure? No way I can think of that you can "bank" it than illegally selling it.

BTW, the named in Vesspyr do drop masters. I only camped one for a couple of days once, and only checked if it was up when I thought of if it while switching toons. Got a Wizzy master from the single Exquisite Chest it dropped during that time. Of course no wizzy on this account, so I gave to a friend for his (at the time 70ish wizzy)....hope he hasn't used it yet.

None, but now I won't have to buy chronos to sell for plat, the masters should replace that income.

Because if that were the case it's extremely likely they'd have said so by now. No developer with half a brain holds back information that will make them loved.

I suppose it's possible they don't want to announce it, even if there is no good reason not to.

This is just conjecture on my part, but if they did increase the drop rate, they might want to keep it on the down low just to forestall the rash of "I'm not getting them at the drop rate that you promised" threads that would almost inevitably occur when people fail to realize that having a given drop rate means that the items will drop at that rate on average rather than meaning that every single player will receive x number of master drops over a given period of time. The devs just might want to let a larger span of time pass before the next accusation that they are engaging in facial assault using an open hand. (As well as the accusations pertaining to baiting and switching, and other such acts of skullduggery. )

Of course, it is also possible that the old drop rate was so bad that the increase would have to increase substantially if they wanted the change to be visible over the short term.

Nope, not a raider, don't want to be a raider (got my fill of that back in EQ1) and even if I was a raider I'd never spend that kind of real money for a 5% boost in power.

If that's what the top end raiding guilds are going to demand of their players then I can predict that raiding in EQ2 is dead. There just aren't enough people that have an extra $500 to toss on their entertainment budget. Especially not when you consider that they're going to have to pay $10 - $15 a month for the ability to keep using that 5% boost in performance.

However, I don't really see an end to raiding. What I do see is the top end raiding guilds learning how to deal with the new content with a force that's just geared in a mix of expert/masters just as they are now. Those folks will look at their abilities, pick out a few heavy hitters and either spend the time farming masters, buy the masters on the broker or just let the researcher upgrade them over time. They'll understand that while that boost would be nice it's not something the HAVE to have right now.

Trying to stay on the original topic though...was the price increase reasonable? From your response I'd have to say that from SoE's perspective it was very reasonable. Obviously they were going to make some money off of you and others like you and now they're going to make even more. From my perspective it was kind of "meh". I wasn't going to pay the old price for an instant upgrade and I'm sure not going to pay the new price. There are others that look at it and they may have spent the money to get one of their class defining masters at the old price but they're not about to pony up the new price. Sounds to me like it was probably a wash, income wise, from SoE's end.

No, the price is not reasonable. I have personally stopped paying SC to complete master research as even with only a few hours left the price is not worth it.

Wow, You really aren't a raider. The top end raiding guilds are not going to change their standing philosophy. We deem that 5% boost as just as important as you showing up for raids. You can't kill the highest end mobs with "meh" gear or "meh" mentality.

So only players with large amounts of disposable income can be top end raiders now? Or do you pool your pennies to help out that top-notch raider who happens to be on a fixed income?

Bottom line is....SOE sees spell researching along with a few other items to be a cash cow and they are banking on it....people will pay for the upgrades or not....I believe the nots will outweigh the wills but
only time will tell. A few posts back one of the players said he was willing to pay over $500 to upgrade his spells....even if I wanted to I simply do not have that kind of money to invest into virtual items.....maybe I'm in the minority on what I view as affordable but I really don't think so....it's not a matter of not wanting to buy upgrades it's a matter of what is an affordable price and the new pricing is not affortable to me.

And do you pay to maintain a subscription for that really good healer that just lost her job and has to drop back to F2P now so will lose access to these spells even if she had them?

That seems to be the part that many are missing here. It doesn't matter if you can find a way to get these spells if you're F2P they're not available. Or am I just not getting it and the raiders already exclude F2P?

With the current system F2P can pay to unlock their high end masters and many do since it's relatively cheap. There is no unlock for GM spells so by saying that raiders are going to require everyone to have their spells at GM level they're basically saying F2P are not welcome in their game.

I tend to agree that the nots will outweight the wills but I'm guessing that the SoE marketing team has some data to back up why they thought this would profit the company. Like you say time will tell.

I, for one, wasn't even willing to pay the old price so I'm not even going to consider the new costs.

So I'm constantly seeing from raiding leaders how much trouble they are having keeping raiders, and getting new raiders. I suspect this is just you - because I can't imagine that those same raid leaders will require all potential raiders to both maintain an all access subscription *and* pay several hundred dollars to go fully grandmastered. That's a huge investment in a hobby that doesn't even result in a physical end product, one most people won't be able to justify.

Yes. The raiding requires all acccess if you want to be on top. But you seems forget that it can be obtained with plat by buying kronos. So raiders yes keep all access. But some don't have real money to spend on research. So soe missplaced their understanding of what market would want.

If this is the case then it explains why raid guilds seem to be constantly recruiting. Seems kind of silly to me to exclude a segment of the population for no good reason. As the game stands right now there is nothing that All Access gets that F2P can't unlock in some fashion.

SOE can be fairly accused of many things, but not understanding how to monetize their products isn't one of them. They're trying to find the magical price point that gives them the most revenue. Price it lower and more people will buy, but the total revenue is less. Price higher and fewer people buy, and again, total revenue suffers.

Real world example: Sporting event tickets (say for a US football game). Lots of people think prices are too expensive, and more people would go if they lowered the price, so the teams would make more money. The problem is the Demand curve just isn't that steep - a lot of people (myself included) wouldn't go to one if it were free. Ok, maybe if I got great seats for good game. I'd much rather sit at home, with my chips and drinks set up on the coffee table, watching my big screen TV, where the players look larger than gnats and I can hear what's going on without having to worry about screaming kids, beer spilled by the guy above me, and all the other 'fun' that the live experience brings with it.

Here's the thing, though. Not everyone cares about going to sporting events. I'm one of those people and I don't really care much about how much a ticket costs. I feel the same way about research pricing. Both the tickets and the research buyouts are there for a certain segment of the population that actually cares about that stuff. If you want to go sit in a loud, crowded space and eat expensive garbage because being there is so magical, go for it. If you want to skip content for that small increase in power, go for it. Too big a deal has been made over this.