Chapter Seventy seven

Atharva was still reading the forums when he got disturbed by concerige. He decided to read further after shopping for clothes. This was the primary reason he was here, so this takes precedence. How long will shopping with a man will take?

Atharva found that there really was a hell. It was called shopping. Gender neutral. Same punishment whether the shopper is man or woman.

He had to get his hair trimmed and styled. Then, based on that, the shopping began in earnest. The concerige was a no nonsense man in his forties, with silver hair, clean shaven striking face and a dapper suit in dark navy. The hair stylist recommended many things including for his face and body, none of which Atharva heard. He didn't have a penny to spend. Inspite of having millions of credits, he was still in debt. The education loan is not for faint- hearted.

Slim fit brown trousers to show off his long legs. White shirt, light yellow waist coat, brown suit, all to show his youth and lanky built. No tie. Though, he was recommended thin diagonal striped dark blue solid tie to go with the suit, Atharva refused. That was the reason he chose to have waistcoat.

After hours of shopping for a single set of clothes, Atharva just collapsed.

What thinking further? What researching?

But the concerige was good. He had been handling issues in hotel while shopping and he went back to job as soon as this one finished. Compared to man in forties, Atharva was very weak physically.

He talked with family. Even if they make matters more complicated and obscure, it's always better to talk to them. He had lavish lunch to get back energy.

Before he could take a deep breath and continue research, a massive news broke through.

Such a big news that it literally crashed the social media networks. The game site of had an update.

It was in response to the query of when will the coin to cash conversion happen and what was the base rate.

Base rate is when the company guarantees that the conversion rate will not fall beyond that level. If it does, then the company has to pay the remaining amount out of its coffers. Obviously, they won't allow that to happen. There would be lots of methods to ensure that the conversion rate would never fall never the base rate.

The answer to it was, of course, in due course. There was some formula based on which, the coins to conversion option would be enabled. It was entirely manned by AI in a supercomputers, thus out of their reach. However, they would certainly able to guess the timeline in near future. That was as good as saying you can just gamble and decide some date.

The problem was not that. That answer was stock answer, which had been told again and again. No, the problem was the follow up question which asked about subscription fees.

Some might be wondering what is the link between the two. They was a link. Unlike the VR gears purchased solely to play the game which came with fixed subscription for the type of gear (that is, simple gear would have low subscription. Pods would have higher. Latest pods, built to suit the game, certainly the highest.), the subscription for the game was different. For the gear, you had to pay fee on weekly or monthly basis whether you used it or not. But for the game, you pay only when you play. That was emphasized during the game launch. And it was said that the probability of paying subscription fees via game coins was very high.

Now you can see the crux of the problem. If there is no coin to credit conversion, the game could have swallowed coins as fees. Or just had subscription fee payment mode fixed in credits. Neither of which were done in this game. So wouldn't a group of players paying either in coins or credits be cheated?

There were so many games out there with subscription format. They had survived, thrived even. Why did you have to bring new things to the table and make mess of the things?

Wait...! What is this new issue of subscription fee details? People already paid for subscription, they got a massive crate/ chest ( based on the amount they had chosen) at the beginning. And there had been lots of options there too, weekly or monthly basis, different amounts to pay. You are telling me that it was not subscription fees?

See, that's where the confusion begins. As the company had no idea when coin to credit conversion begins, they wanted to still put in resources ( read money) into the game and help the players. Especially, those pay to win sort of players, experts and the massive money drainers aka guilds. So they found a middle way and called them gift crates. The gift crates were sort of cheat codes- they would contain regularly used game items like potions, scrolls, armours, weapons, sometimes even skill book.

The game company went on to clarify that this was literally a gift crates, the items within them would be decided by the game AI based on their performance in the game. Also, the different tiers mentioned would actually help the game AI to decide the number of gifts, the tier of gifts etc. It needed a range to work within, this different fees and different tiera. And till the coin to credit conversion centre was activated within the game, this would be only way to get extra goodies. Oh, another serious note- the game would limit the amount of coins to be converted to credits every day, this helping it in maintaining the conversion rate and ensuring it never falls near the base rate.

Happy gaming.

Toodles.

The response to this explanation was immense. There was calls to death, baying for blood and what not. Gamers are passionate bunch. Add to it the desperate and the dreamers who had entered the game with the aim of making millions of credits , the mixture turns extremely volatile.

But the money makers had different ideas. This was really good way to progress faster in the game.