Chapter 526 Extra: Price Adjustments
Jin had thought long and hard on the day before the Opening Ceremony. Since the very beginning, he knew that his exclusively high priced dungeons were not so accessible for the general public. Those who played frequently were usually the wealthier people or at least the upper middle class people.
For cultivators like Luo Bo and Shi Zuo, they had to work additional overtime just to play an additional one or two dungeon runs. Nevertheless, they felt like it was a sort of investment. The guaranteed increase in cultivation had allowed them to be more focused at work, and hence more of their energy could be devoted to performing their job well while some of their colleagues were desperately trying to stay sane after a straight ten hour shift.
The university and high school students were usually unable to pay such prices unless they came from wealthy families like Bu Dong. Luckily there was a long running programme by the government to subsidise cultivation activities by up to 75% of the price as an incentive to entice students to have a better base cultivation from the start.
The government recognised that higher cultivation grades meant that students could do better in exams and subsequently work longer hours for their future companies. Hence, it was like an investment for their future workforce.
What's more was that an increase of cultivation grade allowed the students to earn a one time cash incentive too, which was extremely useful in further upgrading their cultivation or to pay off their student loans.
However, Shenzhen's governmental accounting third parties were baffled at the recent receipts from a particular Dungeons and Pandas store. Initially, they assumed it was a hoax or something which they eventually filed a report the police for an investigation.
Yet Yang Ling was able to intervene.
Apparently, the Tiger Princess, who fiddled with everything that had money in it, predicted that sort of thing would happen to Jin and assured the government accounting third parties that it was legitimate.
At one point, she even gave them a 'disguise' tour of the place without Jin being informed of this. Eventually, they had to agree that given the superb quality of the dungeons, the pricing was somewhat valid. They could only sigh that the government guidelines had been lax enough for an anomaly like Jin's store to be accepted.
Still, Jin was notified by Yang Ling that he should consider looking into the prices or expect formal inspectors to come and audit the place which she knew that he had a lot of "Trade Secrets' to hide.
Alternatively, he was more than welcome to become a Royal Zodiac Dungeon Supplier which would exempt him from a lot of questions.
This was part of the reason why Jin had decided to take another look into the prices and give a proper model of pricing so that if inspectors were to physically audit his store, there would be sufficient paperwork prepared by both the System and Jin. (However, the more apparent reason was that he wanted repeat customers from all ages and not just the rich.).
In addition, their past analysis indicated that about nearly up to one quarter of the people who visited Dungeons and Pandas came to solely spectate and perhaps engage in the cheaper alternatives at other dungeon suppliers.
They unsurprisingly found most of them to be disappointed that they were unable to experience the same feeling they had in Jin's store. Still, they equally frustrated that they did not have enough cash to play any of it in his place as well.
Thus, the Goblin Raid Instance was a prime example that things did not have to stay that way. He had priced it relatively cheap, and in return, Jin was promptly rewarded with an influx of customers from various ages. The store got only more popular ever since the opening of the Goblin Raid Instance, leading Jin to ponder if it was truly necessary to keep those high prices as the System had dictated.
"At this point, the System can only recommend and hopefully persuade User from not changing the prices." The System reiterated that it was looking at long term growth, where higher grade cultivators would come in and find the price point and quality worthy just previously stated in their discussion.
"To accommodate them I wish to return back to dungeon tiers in the future. Now that we have enough variety of monsters that I feel that it should be possible to do so." Jin said, and the System requested for a more detailed explanation for clarification.
At that point, Jin merely teased the System to wait for him to develop the tier based dungeons and proceeded to adjust the cost price of his dungeons.
Similar to his Gaming Packages, Jin had decided to revamp all the prices of the dungeons. The Goblin Raid Instance would be priced at 15 Yuan, with all dungeons previously published as well as the respective arenas costing 25 Yuan.
Not only that, he had revitalised his two old dungeon instances and offered them on Day One as well. The first instance to be revealed was his old Goblin Forest instance where the forest was filled with traps and included his (unevolved) Goblin trio who fought alongside Mr Oink against the cultivators.
But because Jin used the Goblin Forest for the story instance, he renamed this particular old dungeon instance as the Goblin Woods Instance.
The other dungeon instance was where cultivators used to fight against Ke Mi's and her pets, and it was aptly renamed as the Zither Mistress Grasslands Instance. The instance was also priced the same at 25 Yuan too. The only difference was that Jin had promoted these two dungeons as a beginner friendly instance as compared to the rest, which had a storyline in them.
The Dungeon Supplier then included them into a series of package deals to entice people to buy more of them. However, these packages were mostly considered as promotional for the moment until Jin found the right amount of cash squeeze he could get from the customers. He had created a number of packages which would aid beginners and veterans alike.
For example, his Basic Dungeon Party Package cost 90 Yuan, and it consisted of four dungeon tickets which could be gifted to friends or used all by one person. There were also the Veteran, Hardcore and Extreme Packages.
Needless to say, better discounts on a higher quantity of dungeon tickets as well as additional Panda Medals. Only the Hardcore and Extreme Packages featured a pack of tickets that allowed them to obtain several free weapons and armour temporary inscription through a Gacha machine in Octofussy's general store.
Most of it would usually be at least Grade 3 considering the amount of money they paid, but there would be a chance to receive a Grade 5 or even above temporary inscription charms which might aid with their dungeons in the future.
However, the store also made them sign a disclaimer that the use of those inscriptions outside of their store was not the store's responsibility when they bought their packages.
That was just the beginning of packages… There were even more, and Jin was planning to add a tab in the Pandamonium App called Sales Deals.