This isnt even counting the new patches of things which cost more gems to get.

money

My Little Pony: The Gameloft Game
 
“Crack is cheaper than us!”

Why do I get the feeling that EA is behind this?

The restaurant IS skippable, for 15 gems.

Eheh… I’m obsessive when it comes to getting facts right, so one more change.
 
I missed out the restaurant which is 100 gems and unskippable. Fleetfoot and Soarin swap prices when you’re connected online, so you could technically buy both for bits.
 
So that’s 3130 gems, plus 31 gems needed for skips totalling 3161 gems needed. That’s still over $200 worth of gems though.

One FINAL addendum: iOS users, you are no longer screwed! No jailbreakn needed!
 
http://www.reddit.com/r/MLPIOS/comments/139tit/the_ios_hack_youve_all_been_waiting_for_all_items/

For the record, I don’t universally hate freemium games. The best ones only have a small pay-barrier, and the costly stuff is solely for extra things like shortcut/cheat-items and customization thing.
 
If a freemium game has a definitive story/campaign aspect, it would be reasonable to assume that it can be beat by someone putting reasonable effort into it and perhaps paying a reasonable amount. For a freemium mobile game, I’d give it $20. $40 tops for a really good game, JUST to finish the game’s main story/campaign/etc, more expensive things are completely extra.
 
Gun Brothers does this well. It has some guns that (use to) cost upwards of $500, but it was actually better NOT to buy them as they broke the game. The $40 gun was the best in terms of usefulness and enjoyment, but there were plenty of coin-buyable guns that are on-par with other pay weapons. And you could beat all the waves and unlock all the planets without using any premium money if you grinded to get enough coins.
 
But over $250 (US this time, my original calculations was based on Australian pricing which is slightly higher) just to finish the main storyline for this kind of game? As the ONLY way of getting Luna, a fan favorite? That’s just wrong and sickening. I don’t mind 950 gem Celestia (optional thing), I don’t even mind 90 gem Rarity (that’s a reasonable price if it were just that), but 500 gems for RAINBOW DASH? A MAIN CHARACTER? That’s too much, and clearly an attempt to exploit a dedicated fan base.
 
Shame on you Gameloft. Also stop putting freemium pricing models into your premium games, and then charging $8 for it. That’s way too greedy.

@misnamed
 
HERE IS HOW I CALCULATED THE GEMS
 
I already finished the game and forgot most of the quests, so I was going off THIS website: http://www.agrupacionamigos.com.ar/mlpquest.html using the prices from my android phone (which hasn’t beaten the game yet).  
The quests listed come STRAIGHT from the game files, taken from an .xml file in the .obb. I went and looked at all the gem-items and compared it to the list. According to that page, all of these are non-skippable.
 
Fleetfoot DOES cost gems. I’m looking at the store on my phone (which I haven’t beaten the game) and he costs 450 gems. All wonderbolt characters are required, all are non-skippable.
 
I did go back and check for skipping quests. Last I counted, it requires 15 gems to cost Sweetie Belle, 8 gems to skip the Wonderbolt statue and 4 gems to skip the two “Feed Spike” quests. A total of 31 more gems you need, bringing the true total to 3511 gems required.

Yay! Someone screencapped my post!
 
Also note: Without using the android hack, the quickest way to get gems is to use a cheat engine to freeze your level at 2 and constantly level up to 3 (possible on android and jailbroken iDevices on 5.1.1, GamePlayer currently does not support locking so it takes longer to manually reset your level).
 
Assuming your chosen device does not lag, and being generous, I’ll say that you can get 6 gems per 10 seconds doing this. It would still take you around 9 hours of CONSTANT tapping “ok” to get enough gems to finish the game. Still WAY too much.
 
For non-jailbroken iOS: you’re currently screwed. Save files are tied to each device too. Sorry :( .

I quit playing it today. I logged in and now all of my free space is covered in rocks. Over 1ook bits worth of rocks. That doesnt included the randomly gen’d trees and bushes, which all were not there yesterday.

This is why I hate games that have currency you pay with real money.

That and they bank on the parents being stupid enough to give the kids their iTunes account password (or don’t know how to lock out in-app purchases). There was a news story a while back about a kid racking up a bill of £1,500 in Tap Pet Hotel. In that particular case they were able to get their money back, but I’ll bet there are many other instances where the amount spent is significant but too small to bother taking any action.

Essentially the Zynga strategem?

@Background Pony
 
Barrier of entry. $5, even if not a significant amount of money, automatically stops anyone not already interested in the game, anyone lazy and anyone mindful of their spendings.
 
Free game, you get a very large potential customer pool. The number of those that’ll spend $5 or more once they enjoy the game and want more is greater than how many would pay for the game outright. Add to that that they can keep paying money into the game. And the big spenders, of course.

I don’t see why they don’t just sell the game on the cheap :/  
considering very few people will bother buying those but more people would buy the game for maybe $5 I could see them making more of a profit that way

I’m very much joking Smiling.

@Shaky
 
It has nothing to do with bronies having money or previous displays of ostentatious purchases. I sadly know more about these sort of games than anyone else on this board. It’s shitting business model for the average joe, but the average joe will never pay a cent for things in these game one way or the other. The small margin of people that would pay in if the prices were “reasonable” is insignificant; high prices and reeling in casual purchases of expensive items and the rare big spender is the optimal money-making strategy.
 
Sucks for “gamers”, but it makes money, and lots of it.

Bits are easy and free to acquire, especially with timeskipping. I can make a million bits in less than an hour by advancing time.
 
Gems, on the other hand? At the fastest I ever got going, I earned about 90 gems an hour timeskipping. That works out to 38 hours and 40 minutes. While that’s a damn sight better than 16 years, sitting there advancing the day one day at a time for nearly forty hours? That’s… absurd.

Well, I could only imagine it was this:
 
One day, one of the Gameloft employees saw how much good pony plushies would sell for. “Golly Gee!” They thought. “Bronies sure do have a lot of money to spend on toys, I bet that they’ll pay well for digital ponies too!”. So they upped the prices a couple thousand percents and that’s why all people who buy plushies are bastards.

i don’t care how much they charge for a pony
 
those rock clearing prices are insane

Damn.  
Wingardium Leviosa sure is expensive in that game.

the real issue is HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO CLEAR THE ROCKS
 
seriously 16000 for one rock. that is ridiculous

It’s a free game. Deal with not having 100% completion without dropping some cash and enjoy the free bits like every other mortal.
 
Seriously, things don’t just pop out of nowhere; money has to come in somehow. Their revenue method is most likely the one they see as optimal. 10% of players will drop $5-10 for one or two things they really want; 1% will pay $100+ because they’re the collector/completionist types (and have money). 89% will never spend a dime.

It’s just: why not make it like League of Legends?
 
 
The game costs nothing but your time and they sell you an easier way to get certain things, they don’t make it the ONLY way, just the easier way. People pour hundreds of dollars into the game out of laziness. Nobody wants to be forced to pay for something they like, hell some people LIKE the grind for coins/IP, but give them the choice and eventually everyone will take the easy route at least once.
 
 
All I’m saying is: Rarity:50,000 Bits or 50 Gems. Twist: 25,000 bits or 25 Hearts. And seriously Gameloft, nobody’s gonna pay for gems at that price. Either lower the cost or increase their worth.