Buying the Old West
(Editor’s Note: since the publishing of this article, Digital Leisure has been in contact with us. This is what they had to say:
“The author states that after visiting the Mayor you have to pay for the games. All of the games/tasks are free to complete the first time and any Gold or Tokens won are yours to keep. Most people have managed to play for quite a bit using the Gold won from those initial games.
As for panning for Gold – (We’re) not sure how it took so long, but it takes most people less than a minute to earn four pieces of Gold in panning.
Also, there is a continued misconception that we want you to use the Trading Post to convert your Gold to Tokens for items. As it states in the Trading Post, this is to be used to Top Up your amounts to make a trade happen. In all but Blackjack and Five Finger Fillet you can quickly earn tokens for player – win or lose.”)
by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer
There is a period of American history, from about the early 1600’s to the late 1800’s, known familiarly as the Old West or the Wild West. It’s a period of rapid expansion into all of the North American continent, particularly into areas west of the Mississippi River, by the people who had originally settled into the eastern area of the continent, and those people still pouring onto the continent from mostly European countries.
While glamorized in books, magazines, television shows and movies, this period of time was actually a dark smudge of the page of American development, where people took over land not belonging to them in the belief that they had a manifest destiny to expand all the way to the west coast. It’s as shameful an act as kidnapping people from the African continent and bringing them to America as slaves. For some reason, this Western style seems to be one of the more popular choices for clothing, companions, locomotions, personal, and public spaces on Home, along with “Outer space”, “Gothic” and a rather gangster style that I think of as “Bling-bling”.
Digital Leisure has just presented us with a new public space using this American historical theme called the Western Frontier. You can see straight away upon arrival there that they worked hard on this project. From the original designers to the graphic artists and programmers, everyone must have spent many, many hours working on the details of this mammoth undertaking. I wish they had worked smarter, not harder.
First of all, the load time to get to the original space or three other areas of this development is way too long. You need to have the patience of a saint not to get upset with how long it takes. I suggest you go warm up some soup and make a sandwich, eat your soup and sandwich, and clean up the kitchen while loading. Your avatar should have arrived by the time you get back, if you don’t hurry.
After your arrival in this town, called Red Rock Springs, you’ll see an information post to your right and a bank to your left. The information post is very much like the information kiosks at Digital Leisure’s casino, but I suggest you go to the bank first and take a moment to absorb the fact that you can buy gold there, which is the form of currency used there in the frontier, everywhere but at the Trading Post (more on this later). For $.99 you can buy 1000 pieces of gold, which sounds like a good start for shopping and playing games here. Don’t believe it. For $19.99 you can buy 80,000 pieces of gold, which is more like the amount you’ll need here, but we aren’t talking micro-transaction any more, are we?
If you continue up the street, you’ll find a “Trading Post” on the left and a “General Store” on the right. The general store is actually the store tab for the Western Frontier. Trust me on this, you are better off shopping here than at the trading post. (I’ll explain that in due time.) Near the general store you will come upon the mayor of this town, who will set you off on tasks to complete and be rewarded with a personal space called the “Camping Spot”. Actually he is basically telling you to play all the games to be found here, which cost gold, which means you aren’t getting anything for free, unless you managed to mine enough gold in two hours of mining for free on your first visit to the mine or borrow that saint’s patience again, to pan for gold.
Let’s talk about that. One of the other areas you can visit here is called “mining”. After a lengthy time waiting for the space to download and wondering if you have frozen and should re-start Home, you will arrive near a stream where you can pan for gold in several spots. Panning for free gold will earn you about four pieces of gold every ten minutes or so. An hour of this activity, which will feel like an eternity, will net you about 24 pieces of gold. Keep this number in mind. Crossing the stream and going up the hill, you will arrive at one of the two mine entrances. Go in and find an active pile of something (dirt?) and go to work. On your initial visit, you will have two free hours to get into the swing of things, using a pickax (pun intended). After that you can purchase the use of a pickax for 12 continuous hours for $.99 or seven 12-hour intervals for $4.99. I have to say that the idea of pushing buttons (this is how you “mine”) for 12 hours fills me with dread. I couldn’t stand it long enough to use my two free hours. But, hey, if you LIKE to grind and grind and grind . . .this is the game for you.
The saloon is another area requiring a lengthy download. Upon arrival here, you will notice that this is the only place in the Western Frontier that doesn’t require Digital Leisure’s own western-styled clothing, oddly enough. There are three games that you can play here. These are Five Finger Fillet, Liar’s Dice and Blackjack. The rules for black jack are standard, with a minimum bet of 50 gold pieces, or over two hours panning gold for two minutes of play. The Five Finger Fillet game requires hitting the symbol keys on your controller as they appear on the screen. The buy-in is a mere 10 gold pieces and you can win 20 pieces of gold with a score of 45-54 points and 30 gold pieces with a score of 55 or more. Let’s hope you have good hand and eye coordination, because the game comes with a warning that it will take you time (and gold, obviously) to learn the game. Liar’s Dice has a 400 gold piece buy-in and five pages of instructions. I would like to tell you more about it, but as I was reading the first page, another player sat down and the game started immediately.
The fourth area that requires all day to download (just kidding) is the area where you can access the slightly mis-named Stagecoach race. I say that because you start out racing a cart and can (eventually) race with three other vehicles, which are another cart, a wagon, and finally, the named stagecoach. There are two main buildings here, one is the registration office where you will find out that you can race as a rookie for 500 gold pieces or as a “pro” for 2500 gold pieces (sucks to be a winner, I guess). The other building is the barn where you can (for more gold, of course) upgrade your horse, whip and vehicle parts, when you are experienced enough by – you guessed it – winning races. You can, by the way, earn a minimal amount of gold, tokens, and experience here and in the other games, by varying amounts.
Back in town, moving passed the saloon to the left you will find two more games. The “Showdown” and “Shooting Gallery”. When you register at the Showdown, and pay your 250 gold coins, the game will attempt to match you with another player of equal skill. When the game starts there will be a count down from three and then the first player to correctly press three buttons wins. That sounds like about three seconds of play to me, so if you lose that will cost you about 83 coins per second. Have fun. The Shooting Gallery costs 200 gold coins for 100 bullets and 60 seconds of play. The targets start off at a value of 10 points and as with most games of this type, the harder targets give you more points. There is even the possibility of an ammo crate that gives you 25 more bullets and/or a clock that gives you another 15 seconds. You can presently win gold, tokens, and experience at these levels: bronze (2370 points), silver (5035 points), and gold (7095 points), but there is a little notice that these levels can be changed. In other words, if you’re all too good, the scores will be raised.
So let’s finally talk about the Trading Post. I believe that developers came up with the idea of “game currency or purchasing tokens” to divert our attention from the fact we are spending real money on their games and virtual items. I’m not so naive as to think Home should be free, but I’m also not so naive that I don’t know when I’m spending money and how much money I’m spending. Well, Digital Leisure has decided to add another level to confuse people even further at the Trading Post. Here you need to convert gold to tokens at the rate of 97 gold pieces for one token and then you can gift items to friends or trade with others – friends or strangers. So, let’s do a little math. Rounding off, that’s basically a cost of 100 gold pieces for one token. 1000 gold pieces is approximately 10 tokens, at the $.99 rate. This means that you will spend about $4.00 to indirectly buy a 40-token hat. So, do the math yourself to figure out how much an 1850-token dress or the 2300-token buffalo would cost you. I have to wonder if Digital Leisure did the math, themselves. Yes, I’ve heard that they want us to “play the games” to earn gold, but it COSTS gold to play them, so you’d better be really good at them, really fast.
I’m not going to tell anyone where to spend their money, how much to spend, or even how to spend their money. It’s theirs to do whatever makes them happy with it. If you love the games there at the Western Frontier buy gold and spend away. If you want to gift or trade for high ticket items, buy gold, convert to tokens, and spend away. I hope you have fun, as I hope everyone has fun on Home. For myself, I’m still looking for value in my purchases. You may find me searching the stores for sale items, playing the mostly free games, re-matching my clothing articles for a new look, and re-decorating my estates – but mostly, you’ll find me hanging with my friends at places with nice scenery, talking up a storm.
November 27th, 2013 by Kassadee Marie | 3 comments
Home is endlessly entertaining to this California girl. Kassadee has been in Home for about four years, and loves almost everything about it (with a few notable exceptions). She spends way too much money there, and perhaps too much time... Someday she will travel the world and write about the people she meets and the places she sees.
Share
| Tweet |
It’s a life like wild west town you work really hard making someone else richer. The bandits are running the town. But the latest update in GTA5 does the same, in some missions I spend more on bullets than what I win at the end.
First I don’t think it’s fair to keep looking at the gold to coins conversion to estimate cost. It’s not how the space is designed and the conversion is only there to quickly get the few coins you need for an item. I managed to earn close to 1000 golds out of my free games. Using it I was able to earn around 90 coins. That was a 50 coins (Wich cost me 65
) black top hat for me, free of charge.
There’s something wrong with the mining thou. In order to get your $1 worth of coins for the cost of the pickaxe. You need around 90 min of non stop mining.. maybe a little more! At this rate 8hrs of mining out of your 12hrs pick will earn you $5 worth of coins… at the $1 “bundle” value… A net profit of $4 for 8hrs of tedious button pushing. Enough to drive even the most dedicated Home user insane.
But it get worst. A $5 axe bundle will get you 7 axes (40% bonus) While a $5 gold bundle will get you 10 times the value of the $1 bundle! Wich mean you’ll actually need to work each picks an average of over 2hrs to get your money back. Over15hrs for the whole bundle BEFORE you start making any profit!!! This make buying a X7 daily pass sounds like a bargain!!!
I know you need to be damaged to truly appreciate Home but this is beyond simple damage. You need to be insane to do this to get gold coins. Only reason I see someone mining is to level up in the mini game. The gold is just a little extra to make the effort worthwhile
If you want to grind for gold play the 5 fingers filets knife game. Easy to earn a 10 gold profit. Much faster than mining, free and somewhat more interresting.
Another problem I have is the stagecoach race.
I played against a slitghty upgraded coach. I did’nt stand a chance. It look more like a gamble game where you have no idea of the odds than a race. You have a low and a high stakes table and you pray for the best. At 500 gold I could play a high end arcade race game for the same price… And 120 000 golds for a fully upgraded stagecoach? Something around $30,00! Sound a bit off the scale for the game.
They say there is a sucker born every minute, and I’m pretty sure DL is banking on all of them spending time in this space.
On arrival I was pretty keen on it. Of course, that was only after leaving and returning twice in order to get it to load. Then, as many have experienced, my eagerness to explore began to dwindle with each new Relocate Download and Disconnect.
The design and feel is fantastic, and really enables one to get lost in the feeling of the old West. Sadly, our choice of outfits is extremely limited, but I was in favour of the idea that you need to be dressed in Western attire in order to help sell the immersive experience. I was really grateful that the dev team let me play each game once for free, but quickly realized it was an attempt to hook me. After perusing the trading post/store I was really eager to begin playing more games for gold so that I could eventually hope to trade for some really great looking items. I quickly got started with the extra dough I’d made from my free Pick Axe in the Mines, and began playing a few games. Within no time I was poor. Where had all my gold gone? Did I really just lose it all that easily? I went back to each game and began tallying up the prices on the costs of playing. WOAH!!! Clearly I wasn’t paying much attention earlier. The prices are ludicrous!!
With what little money I had left, I decided to play the one game I’m familiar with. You see, I have DL’s Saloon personal space, and I do really well at Blackjack there. Clearly though, the Blackjack tables in the Frontier are coded differently, because it’s nearly impossible to make it to the plus side of your wallet. I’m convinced that random is not actually random here, but I have trust issues with money making game companies to begin with, sooooo…..
Anyways, after realizing how broke I was I toyed with the idea of buying more gold for real money. Before doing so, I looked again at the prices to play the games, as well as the prices of merchandise for trade/sale. I’m glad I did, because as Kassadee has alluded to, the conversion rates are so astronomically out of whack that you’d have to be rich, a fool, or a rich fool to spend the kind of money you’ll need to in order to acquire anything here that’s actually worth acquiring.
It was a nice place to visit, and I really thought it was going to give Acorn Meadows some competition and pull me away from it, but it’s outrageous prices will keep me out of that place for good now. I have my Saloon personal space, and I can get my Western fix there. If you need to find me, I’ll still be hanging out in Acorn Meadows where they did it right… allowing me to level for free without wasting my time panning for gold for 2 gold nuggets per minute, or spending real money for hours and hours of my time playing a Pick Axe version of Rock Band.
The conversion rates are so out of whack that DL would stand to make more money if they would just allow people to buy all of their trading post items for real money in the store, at prices that are consistent with what’s already available on Home from all the developers. Honestly, once people catch on to just how much of a rip-off these items are, they will stop buying and the Frontier will just become another ghost town.
It’s a shame. I really wanted that buffalo.