Tough Times in Ponyville

[calzephyr]

Even a children's game isn't free from economic realities. Forget about that lemonade stand, Cutie Mark Crusaders! Sorry to squash your dream of running a bookstore Twilight Sparkle, you're waiting tables from now on! Same with you Apple Family ponies - the farm just ain't makin' the bucks.

I noticed the weirdest problem with the FIM game - or maybe opportunity. Each shop can employ up to three ponies and produce one of two items at a time. Each item makes the same amount of gold per minute, and it doesn't change when a third pony is added. However, that third pony does give a profit boost to the shop. After sitting down with some scratch paper, I realized a few things.

For starters, my Ponyville has a labour shortage. I have bought all the ponies that don't cost gems or hearts except one, and she's 67500! There are enough ponies so that each shop can have one pony, but only a few can have two or three.

Then there's the training budget. All the shops have a specified level for skilled pony labour. The cheaper shops, such as the windmill, lemon stand and cherry stand, can employ 0 or 1 star ponies. These shops make a little gold very quickly with unskilled workers. To get the most out of the profitable shops, I need 3 and 4 star ponies, and there are too few of them. It costs 100 coins per mini game to level up a pony, but because the times between levelling up a pony can be 1-2 hours, it's tempting to send them to pony boot camp for 1000 coins for double the levelling up points. Do this for 10 ponies each time and I'll never have the budget to attract top talent like Fleetfoot ;-)

It hasn't taken me long at all to get back to where I was after re-installing the game - soon I will hit level 60 and that's as far as one can level up. I ran into the gem paywall problem unfortunately - there was no getting around having to build a restaurant for 50 gems or buying the last Mane Six pony, Rainbow Dash, who apparently used to cost hundreds of gems. I feel the pricing scheme is unfair; it's not how much the gems cost, but how much in gems the in-game items cost. Gameloft has been quoted as saying that users are confusing free and freemium, but when Princess Celestia costs 950 gems...or $70 that's a problem! I don't mind forking out $10 since I do get a lot of enjoyment from the game, but given that it's so buggy and fragile, I'm not impressed. It's all too easy to spend gems too - anyone with a big fat thumb like mine can see them go woosh! which has happened a couple of times now. One may earn gems in-game from finding the Pony Who Shall Not Be Named, by levelling up, daily bonuses and installing other games, but it seems a bit overpriced. Apparently there are scripty tricks for manipulating the price list, but it seems like so much work and I don't want to bork the game. I lost the piece of scrap paper that had how many gems everything in the game would cost, but let's just say it's a lot!

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Lol, I'm so glad I'm not the only one thinking about these calculations! :-D

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

So true - usually in most games you end up with a ridiculous amount of money, but it seems I'm always a little poor in Ponyville. It really is a geeky game - it seems like the ponies all have different stats - some are faster at apple picking or better at flying.

The Facebook friend part for me still doesn't work either. Fortunately the Gameloft Live friend part does, although it can take a week for friends to show up :-P

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well in that case, I just created an account, zandperl as usual. Want to add me?

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Natch! BTW, if you need more friends, there's the thread I created in equestria_mlp. I'll find it when I have a minute. It's 50 hearts to get Scootaloo.

[frith]

Lady Voldemare!

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm so evil!

[frith]

I glanced at my wall calendar and lo! March 16: the Calgary Brony Exhibition. I looked it up and it is indeed a thing.

Linky links: Calgarybronies group on the Rainbow Dash Network.

Their Blogspot site with the where, when and wherefores of the Calgary Con to be held a week from now. Might be fun.

[frith]

*Points up* There's a comment there. Because I included OMG links (Oneoneone!!11!infinity), LJ was pleased to mark it lovely spam (lovely spam) spam, spam, spam, spammmmm!

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I went to one once and it was not fun, unless your idea of fun is 30 people screaming and throwing things at each while watching fan videos :-( I drove two of my friends from art college there and it was just the most not fun three hours of my life :S This one awful nerd was just loud to be loud and said things like "Rarity is such a slut! Why are girls sluts like Rarity?"

[frith]

Eww! That is _not_ what I would call a fun time. I'm always worried that a meet-up with a bunch of strangers is going to devolve into something like that. Sometimes I get wind of a meet-up in Montreal and I'm all wow! people who like MLP:FIM... but that's tempered with: um, an unstructured meeting with a bunch of strangers who are gamer-nerds and probably little else. I wasn't the type to hang out in malls when I was in high school, and I certainly am not that type now. I much preferred the library (book nerd!). I still might go to another Brony con if: it's in Canada; I can drive to it within 12 hours; there are art panels; there's good fan-art to buy.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you know, if I was half my current age, I probably would have thought it fun. There were about 30 people crammed into a small room; maybe 8 were women. Ah nerds! It makes me feel better about being nerdy :-)

[frith]

Nerds represent! And sorry about that "gamer-nerd" crack, that was bigoted of me. What I was getting at was that a meet-up that devolves into watching other people mash buttons is something I'd find boring. ^_^