The new MMORPG Skyforge is keeping our author Schuhmann busy. He has searched for the catch in the payment model… and found it.
Since the closed beta, I’ve been trying to figure out what these Argents are for. This is the premium currency in Skyforge. You get them if you’ve purchased a founder’s package, for example. Well, I admit that as a privileged press guy I didn’t really buy that, but it was provided as a press package. But still!
Where is the Pay2Win element hidden in Skyforge?
Back to the Argents. I quickly found out: You can also exchange them for “Credits,” the regular in-game currency, and then buy items on the marketplace to get enhancement stones, for example. They can therefore be indirectly used as a “character boost” to improve item slots.
But I was convinced that this couldn’t be all there is. So since the closed beta, I’ve been looking for the catch: Where exactly is the “Pay2Win” element that pulls so many of these Argents out of your pocket that your credit card works overtime? Where is the point where someone tells me: It would be better if you bought the premium currency for euros now.?
Yesterday, I found it, BUT: out of sheer stupidity. Or, to put it more heroically, I as a heroic test subject tracked down the insidious pitfalls of the system (!) and got stuck in them, so that you don’t have to.
About Aether Slots and Argents in Skyforge
In the huge atlas, the progression system of Skyforge, there are certain nodes called “Aether Slot.” There are various types of these. When you unlock a Sun-Aether Slot, nothing happens yet. Here, suitable stones must then be placed. You usually obtain these quite sparingly in the open quest zones. When you place these stones, a relatively small amount of Argents is deducted. That’s around 40 Argents. If you have 40,000, that’s nearly nothing. In return, the node gets stronger and increases the base values slightly.
I’ve gotten into the habit of going to the atlas after combing through an open quest zone and just mass placing the Aether Stones without looking too closely. 2 there, 2 here, nothing happens.
Yesterday, I did PvP with the new patch and found 65 of these stones in a backpack (probably a bug). So I snatched an Aether Slot and just hammered the button until all the stones were in. And that was the big mistake! Don’t do that!
45 euros clicked away in 20 seconds
Because the costs to place a stone increase massively later on. This means the more stones of one type I place into an Aether Slot, the greater the costs become. So in the end, I invested the entire supply of Argents I had gained from the founder package. Instead of thinking, “Well, 65 stones, maybe it costs 3000 Argents,” I ended up wasting 36,000 of them. If I were to buy as many Argents as I clicked away, it would be about 45 euros (okay, there would be a few thousand Argents left).
It would have been much wiser to spread the 65 stones over several “Sun” Aether Slots. Or to not do it at all, because the prestige increase and also the extra power that these invested 45 euros brought me are completely ridiculous. It would only make sense if my character were otherwise at the efficiency limit and these Aether Stones were so to speak “the icing on the cake.” The last little bit that one can get out with a lot of effort. If I really wanted to convert my Argents into prestige, it would have been more effective to exchange them for credits and then invest them on the marketplace.
Let my pain be a lesson to you. Just because the first click costs 45 Argents, it doesn’t mean that the 60th click is also that cheap.
