Sounds like a lot of people were making hay while the sun shone, good for them. 

I'm charged in EUR so there's not much difference for me re USD. But if I lived in South Africa, for example, I'm sure it'd be a no-brainer to not buy stuff on here. 

I can kinda see your point that making things too cheap will lead to things being overpowered, but I can also see the point that there was probably some short-term fun to be had with this "glitch" on Sparta. And let's face it, this game isn't going to last forever. 

I know everyone loves a good screenshot so here's a good kill I had this month. To buy back just the Dark Drags I lost would cost about 120k sapphs at the 75% discount rate.  

Who knows how much it would cost the player I cleaned. Crazy to siege a castle with that much def these days but that's another story. 

But I doubt either of us will be spending much on revives - which we might do if things were cheaper. 

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Wow - the biggest issue in the game this year and a really contentious one and we can't even muster a conversation about. It really is dead here.

On the ARS it is what it is.

People that knew about it got a massive advantage. Ppl that didn't lost out.

It certainly spurred spending from a number of people that wouldn't normally spend.

But clearly it completely canabalised existing revenues from the mega coiners by approx 90%. That isn't sustainable.

If it had gone on forever at those prices, the game would have been completely ruined. When bought stuff becomes greater than earned stuff, there is no game anymore. 

So personally I am glad it's ended. Disappointed can't get cheap deals anymore. And will go back to not spending any money on the game. But overall it needed to happen, not least because I don't think the games were financially viable at those prices and wouldn't have been kept open for much longer.

I also find it asumsing that despite the fact someone mailed all the marshals in the game, a number of leagues (pretty major leagues on my server), completely missed it. So in a way it gave an advantage to those that are switched on, continually check mechanics and keep their ear to the ground and pensalised those with useless/inactive marshals.

This is not news. Buying in ARS has been a normal for a long time. If you cared to listen a bit in 2016, I would have told you how Emperors didn't put thousands of dollars into a paypal account. 

But I was shocked to see the trick leaked. Also I didn't know that you could just press a button and your purchase currency would change. 

I heard about ARS from Roftie while he was roftie in emperors. The trick at the time involved using a VPN for a time. Which will cause your IP to change and you would by in Pesos. 

I didn't bother to use the trick cause buying in Pesos only reduced the 9$ package to about R13-00. But there were bank charges at the time. Plarium then moved their banks to Nerthelands and I forgot about the trick. 

I have to say I really enjoyed buying in Pesos. It made sense for me and I bought repeatedly on my alts increasing their purchase power to 330$ packages. 

@Limad 

You are right it was fun. Peso prices reflected the geopolicatal atmosphere of South Africa and made sense. Let me give you an example, Spotify premium is R59.00 a month, R35.00 for students. That is the price of a 5 star resturant meal. Plarium charges R130 for a basic package. about 65% of South Africans live under R800.00. It makes no sense to buy a R130 package. But I can buy a R13.00 package everytime in Pesos. 

Yeah agreed its been known about for a long time. They switched ARS to dollars back then to prevent it. 

The new news was that they put ARS back onto it's own currency and of course added the feature that means you didn't need to VPN. That exploded the usage by players, as very few know/have VPN. So this time masses of money went through ARS. On top of that the Argentine currency devalued massively over the last couple of years. So the packages went from being "cheaper" in ARS to being about 90%+ off.

I have heard of indivdual players getting up to 30m sapphires. To put that in context that is about 15bn troop power.

It was interesting seeing some leagues exploit it hard while others failed to notice because their marshals cba to check their mails.  Overall I agree it's good that it has been removed though, long term game balance couldn't sustain people being able to buy stuff at 90% off.  

It certainly helped for people who live in countries with struggling economies.  But you have to remember it also benefited people who could afford to buy even at regular price, but with the discount instead of buying a few packages a week they could buy every single available package every day (which comes out to like 3-4 million sapphires a week) so in a pvp game you're still not coming out ahead.  

Funny thing, people know that they can now switch. A dollar is R13, a lot cheaper if you are American. So there is no stopping this. Players could just switch to South Africa and buy at 13 times ceaper.

Players will just keep switching. I heard that now Mexico is the next location. Next will be China, then Japan, ect. 

I think Plarium might finally take notice to players who complained that the game is highly biased for Americans. 

I think Kabam was cheaper too. I remember seing a R1 package on Kabam and started playing there. Then Plarium nerfed it. 

If Plarium needs to fix the game, they need to charge Americans more. A 9$ package should be 20$ to American, and 9 Euro to Europeans, ect. This will create a more stable balance. Prices should reflect geopolitical environment. 

There are no super cheap currencies now. Any have been put to dollars.

There are some that offer a bit of discount to your local currency and hey if you are buying then might as well buy with some discount, but none that are crazy levels that will persaude ppl who don't spend to suddently start spending (or I suspect those that do spend, to spend that much more).

Players will find a way. I don't think they can change currency of major ecoomies. They can't charge me in dollars. Certain countries will retain their own currencies. Like South Africa, China, Japan, ect. 

Even if they dollarize, they can't make prizes expensive in those countries. My prices for a basic package is R109. You can compare that with your package at an exchange of R13-16 : 1$/1 Euro. 

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So if you need to buy cheap, just switch to South Africa. They can't mod it. 

 "Does anyone here have any thoughts about certain currencies/countries being reset to dollars"?
 

I’m sure if you ask Royal Phenix or DBA players they will be shocked to find out Rebels and KT have being buying packs at 10% the cost of what everyone else was buying for months. It is most certainly the reason they lost beacons recently.  
 

Its the single most damaging and unbalancing thing that has happened in stormfall to my knowledge.  Just imagine if Emps had been tipped off to this.. O my word would you be in troubles 😉
 

😎 All hail Argentina 

WickeD  

This is what was told to me by Rizzo.  Argentina paid the bill for the DBA beacon grab.

If RP and Emps didn't find out about this then its their fault. Any functioning league will need to have a basic intelligence network. Its also strange that you claim Emps didn't know because I am certain that this info was shared to multiple Emps players. Its either they chose not to tell Emps or the leadership didn't  share with the entire league. 

I think the leadership simply didn't share because of fears that Plarium might find out and close the tap. I also shared a screenshot in my league and clear intruction of how to buy but people didn't care. 

Emps and RP did find out about. Their marshals got sent the same instruction mail that all other leagues in all servers, got sent by the disgruntled player that blew the lid on it.

So use of ARS is purely down to the effectiveness of your leadership. Are they active enough to read their mails and are smart enough to realise what it meants and communicate it effectively to the league.

There is no point in a particular league complaining about it, everyone had the same opportunity. If no one told you about it your just in the wrong league, with the wrong leadership.

DJ, I would like to know how your certain every marshal was informed of this and given instructions. I will have a bone to pick if its confirmed. 

Price discrimination based on nationality is unethical regardless of who was told what. This is not an problem for the ones who exploited it but for Plarium. I’m positive that if I had known I would have done the same thing. 

I didn’t find out about the Argentinian ZAR until after I left emps, and when I returned it had already been set to USD. But I sent instruction for everyone in the league to adjust their setting to South Africa, when purchasing in ZAR you pay roughly 25% less for all transaction’s. 

Now moving forward its pretty simple, just keep your eye on international news and any country flirting with certain  ideology’s , they are certain to have a currency collapse, and it will take Plarium 6 months to react.  

WickeD 

I talked to a lot of people. And they all got it, quite a long way down the league list. And it got sent to leagues in other servers and in other versions of the game (Soldiers, TD, etc etc).

The person that blew the whistle on it, appears trying to have a grudge with Plarium and wanted as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, to know about the super discounting.

For a league it miss it completely. Not only did they have to miss the message but all of their allies needed to miss it or no one in leadership to be talking to other leagues at all.

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On your other point I am very suprised Plarium don't update FX rates on a daily / weekly or monthly basis, as every other company does. They literally haven't done it in years.

To Duncan's point we can only speculate as to why they don't update FX.

It is possible they are trying to be nice. If your currency devalues and they keep updating the FX rates/ prices fixed to their home currency then the game gets more and more expensive for the people in devaluing countries. By never updating FX rates they effectively drew a line in the sand on a particular day and said your prices will never get more or less expensive than they are right now. We will take an FX risk, rather than pass it onto you the customers.

Equally it may just be incompetence. No way of knowing.

Clearly it became a nonsense though when large numbers of players learned they could arbitrage into the cheapest currency for massive discounts. It kind of had to change, just amazing it took them over a month to get round to doing it.

Price discrimination is not unethical. Its a method used to maximize profit. It worked for Plarium for years now. It only backfired when they included an option to change location from where a player buys. Price discrimination is simply a way to make sure that players buy at optimal level, no matter their pocket size. A Zimbabwean buys 35K sapphires at 40$ while an American buys at 35$. That is because a Zimbabwean playing this game is likely to be rich and can afford to pay 5$ more.

Also Plarium did take note of FX rates when they made their system. The SA rate is set at optimal level of 1$:R10. This is optimal evel which many companies use. I only ever seen American and Canadian companies charging me at FX rates. But that is largely because of old over-complicated outdated US/Canada banking laws. 

 Its also wrong to make over simplistic exaggerated comments about South Africa. Your hatred of communism/socialism is simply a reflection of your cultural outlook, and has nothing to do with weather the system works. Its up to South Africans to decide for themselves what kind of system they want. Either way it is wrong for you to make such comments on a gaming platform that has nothing to do with politics.