I was originally asking on another thread if purchasing bot hours stacks with the free Bot Author 200 hours. And I got impatient so I just tried it myself... they don't stack. I'm not completely surprised by the outcome, but it really doesn't make sense. Like, I paid 5$ and now only have 100 hours more than I did before, 500 hours total when I had 400 for free before. Essentially I paid 5$ for 100 hours. Let me clarify. I'm not really complaining, it's just 5$ and it's nice to give back to the site that's made me quite a bit of GP so far. But from a consumer standpoint the system makes no sense at all. Like, I get that the bot author hours are small supposed to be a bonus for dev testing (and arguably I barely deserve them so far, but that's another story entirely), but this system disincentivizes a bot author rank from buying a small to medium amount of hours. I mean, normally hours are a little over $1 per 100 hours which is solid pricing, but if you have the bot author rank and want to bump your usage up by a couple hundred... it's $5 or 6$ for only 100 or 200 hours more. Which makes me feel like I'm paying more than I need to, since it's almost twice as much the usual rate unless you're buying bulk hours. Plus, it feels weird that the bot author rank perk is basically removed once you pay for supporter... I would think these two ranks should stack, so you don't leave people with the bot author rank thinking "Hmm I want to spend a couple dollars but unless I spend a lot I barely get more than I get for free". Or even reduce the bot author rank to 100 hours but make the 100 hours stack. Or something. tl;dr: it's weird and counterintuitive imo that bot author 200 hours perk basically disappears when you buy hours and disincentivizes a bot author rank from spending a small amount of money. I don't really care (or expect) this post to change this, just sharing my point of view that it feels kinda weird. Wanted to see if anyone agrees. Not looking for a refund or anything. Also this post might just look rambly sry I'm not always concise. If it makes no sense just lemme know thx.
I realise that, but at least for normal users (I think) the intention is so that people will feel compelled to buy more since the effective price is lower the more they buy, but with bot author ranks it feels janky that if they pay they basically lose the perk. I don't know, maybe I partially disagree with the pricing scheme overall too, it just feels extra janky for bot author ranks. Tbh I kinda do think all the prices should be linear, since it would make more sense for 100 hours to actually be 1$ rather than this weird subtle scaling making it feel like you "lose" your free hours when you buy a small amount of hours. Or maybe that's just me being a cheapskate.
