My limit is 100$ per month.

[Ysh]

I think this simply depends on your perspective of money and life in general. It is not unreasonable to want to allot a certain amount of your income towards an entertainment/leisure expense, this method of stress reduction is important if you are pretty much anyone that has a life and job outside of your home. What someone chooses to spend their money on isn’t as consequential if they expect to receive a reasonable level of enjoyment or usefulness out of it.

If I have $100 budget per month for entertainment and for some reason I will like to have golden subscription, it is far more efficient for me to buy 90 days bronze subscription for $18 and bank these $100 per months for the three months than to buy golden subscription every month. This is $18 + $210 (=$228) for 15 months of subscription, 12 months of which is golden compared to $35 * 12 = $420 for buying it month to month for one year. Only thing you miss out on is 3 month of ''free'' patch hats from not having golden subscription during this time. I classify this under ''better late than never.'' Three months is not very long time to wait for this, and I think for a man where $200 is a lot of money to him, he should be willing to accept this delay.

This strategy do not even require you to ''go without.'' Really, Haven is very cheap hobby. You can run game on low specifcation computer and play for total free if you would like. If you want to be maximum competitve, you only must pay $15 one time fee and $50 per year for subscription. For how many hours you can play this game, this is very good rate for entertainment. I think online video game is very efficient in this way in general. Even for games that cost $15 per month, this is quite cheap for whole month of fun.

It is almost a given that every person in the world will spend their money on something someone else feels is frivolous or a waste, what matters is if you feel that purchase was worth it. Maybe someone works a min wage job but wants to spend $60 on a video game that they have been really looking forward to and know that they will enjoy, what’s so wrong about that? As long as you are still able to afford your bills and other important commitments then I think that’s fine. Sure you may not be putting money away but people are free to live their lives how they please and if they are happy living that way then that is great.

If you are not putting money away then you are not able to ''afford your bills and other important commitments'' because you will never be able to retire from this working. You must work until you will die, and in any case that you become unable to work then you will become burden to society. I will be paying for your bills in this case. I think to live in this way is irresponsible and an active detriment to me and mine, so of course I will not encourage a man to live in this way.

It doesn’t make good business sense to create a payment model based around “hey if you wanna throw us more money then go for it even though you’re getting a raw deal” and obviously I can’t see how well their subscriptions are doing but I feel that the bulk of their money probably comes from sub tokens anyways if majority of players would rather buy a long bronze subscription or a short gold subscription instead of one of the more expensive options. This directly correlates to the perceived value of the subscription package and not much else, such as gold sub not providing hats from previous tiers.

I think nobody is accusing jorb or loftar of being great businessmen. If you are buying golden subscription, I think you probably do so because you will like to give Seatribe more of your money. I suppose for sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do have one year golden subscription active on my account. Reason I buy this is because to me, $17.50 per month is not large expense. I have a lot of respect for this jorb and loftar and I would like for this game to be successful. I have been playing off and on for almost decade now, and for much of that time I do not pay a dime. Additionally, getting most patch hats is appealing to me, since I have some fondness for collecting items, even if I do not really use all of these hats anyway. For all of these reasons, I decide to buy this subscription. However, I could easily see how a man could think this does not contain enough value. After all, there is no functional difference between $50 and $210 annual subscriptions except for these cosmetic hats.

I suspect that there are ways to monetize this game more effectively. I suspect there are even ways to monetize it more effectively without making too many of players very angry. It is not obvious to me what these ways are, and it is hard for me to speculate further without knowing numbers of how well current business model is doing.

I also agree that higher tier should provide all lower hats, and have suggested this to jorb before. I have also suggest to him that he puts in store that you will get patch hats for ''free'' with higher tier subs, since it seem to me he is effectively giving value away without using it to benefit his sales. Given no thing has changed since then, I suspect he either is not swayed by my argument, or he does not care to improve his earnings in this way.

[Ants]

By the way, gold subs don't get a hat every single week. Once in a while no one can get the update hat without paying. That happened with the pope hat.

[Kaios]

If you are not putting money away then you are not able to ''afford your bills and other important commitments'' because you will never be able to retire from this working. You must work until you will die, and in any case that you become unable to work then you will become burden to society. I will be paying for your bills in this case. I think to live in this way is irresponsible and an active detriment to me and mine, so of course I will not encourage a man to live in this way.

That’s a problem for future Homer.

The response to that is quite more complicated than this topic is really about, I don’t know if you want to start delving in to that more but I will just say that the increase of inflation has been moving faster than the rate at which employers increase salaries these days and that also leads in to some discussion regarding potential employment opportunities in the future relating to technological advances and a universal basic income. I am a firm believer in enjoying life where and when you can because it sucks and you never do know when your time will come. If you have a family to look after that certainly changes things but am I going to fault someone because instead of putting that $100 under their mattress they put it towards a hobby or video game instead? Fuck no.

[Ysh]

If you are not putting money away then you are not able to ''afford your bills and other important commitments'' because you will never be able to retire from this working. You must work until you will die, and in any case that you become unable to work then you will become burden to society. I will be paying for your bills in this case. I think to live in this way is irresponsible and an active detriment to me and mine, so of course I will not encourage a man to live in this way.

That’s a problem for future Homer.

The response to that is quite more complicated than this topic is really about, I don’t know if you want to start delving in to that more but I will just say that the increase of inflation has been moving faster than the rate at which employers increase salaries these days and that also leads in to some discussion regarding potential employment opportunities in the future relating to technological advances and a universal basic income.

Perhaps there will be game changing paradigm shift. I am the kind of man who believes things when he will see them.

I am a firm believer in enjoying life where and when you can because it sucks and you never do know when your time will come. If you have a family to look after that certainly changes things but am I going to fault someone because instead of putting that $100 under their mattress they put it towards a hobby or video game instead? Fuck no.

If you think this life sucks then I hope one day you will see that it does not need to be this way for you. There is so much goodness, and so much capacity for goodness in this world.

[Kaios]

If you think this life sucks then I hope one day you will see that it does not need to be this way for you. There is so much goodness, and so much capacity for goodness in this world.

Sorry haha I did not mean for that to come across so cynical, I am quite happy. To quote a great man though, life's a bitch and then you die.

[Hrenli]

Because whipping out the calculator on your phone or desktop is too hard, amirite?

Nope. Because $17.50 now and $17.50 next month aren't exactly the same thing. Because one year subscription and 12 separate monthly subscriptions aren't exactly the same service. And a lot more. In real life when it comes to the pocket if you whip a calc and divide a sum over a year it will give you an abstract number which is unfair to compare with a cost of monthly service. It will be just a math exercise. As I said - most of us don't live in a math book.

[MagicManICT]

Because $17.50 now and $17.50 next month aren't exactly the same thing.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Also, I was merely pointing out to someone earlier in the thread that seem confused about where the 17.50 came from.

And just to note: label it properly. It's called a pocketbook or checkbook. A math book is where you homework is found for a class you didn't like in school.

[Hrenli]

Because $17.50 now and $17.50 next month aren't exactly the same thing.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Inflation, lost opportunity cost and the rest of stupid economical mumbojumbo. Gold subscription costs $35/month or $210/year. Anything else is an abstract number and just a math exercise.

And just to note: label it properly. It's called a pocketbook or checkbook. A math book is where you homework is found for a class you didn't like in school.

I meant a math book. I did like it in school quite a lot, thanks.

[MagicManICT]

Inflation, lost opportunity cost and the rest of stupid economical mumbojumbo.

I tend to ignore it as it's a life, not a business. Some people live their life that way. I find it complicates it and you lose out on the opportunities of having an interesting life.

That said, if you're into the game enough, or just love jorb and loftar that much, and really want that gold subscription, wouldn't it be better to save up to pay for it this way over a couple of months instead of settling for what you can afford now? Even if you don't want to pay for a year at a time, 3 or 6 months is still a solid discount.

I meant a math book. I did like it in school quite a lot, thanks.

This is what I get for writing in generalities.

[Ysh]

Because $17.50 now and $17.50 next month aren't exactly the same thing.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Inflation, lost opportunity cost and the rest of stupid economical mumbojumbo. Gold subscription costs $35/month or $210/year. Anything else is an abstract number and just a math exercise.

$210/year is $17.50/month. If you really would like to get technical, since I must pay this $210 up front, I will lose benefit of invest these dollars (i.e. opportunity cost). Average rate of return in stock market I think is consider to be 7%/year. In this case, you are ''losing'' $210 * 0.07 = $14.70 by paying up front. Really, actual value will be lower than this, since if you pay by month you are spending some of your principal each month. This value is assuming you are investing full amount of $210 for entire duration.

If you will talk about inflation, then if average inflation is 3.22%, then it will be effectively 3.22% cheaper to buy this good in one year time, assuming price of this good do not change. In this case again if we will overestimate, and imagine world where I can have my 1 year subscription and then pay at end instead of beginning (even more generous than pay month to month), this is representing $210 * 0.0322 = $6.72.

Based on this, I think total loss of pay up front due to opportunity cost and benefit of inflation is at most $14.70 + $6.72 = $21.42 over course of whole subscription. This represent additional fee of $21.42 / 12 = $1.79 per month. So if it will pleasure you, I suppose it is more accurate to say that this price of annual subscription is some place between $17.50 and $19.29 per month, effectively. This is still much better than monthly rate of $35, even in worst case.