7 replies to this topic

[Amberite]

Was thinking about buying the Phranken camo for one of my mechs. I tried looking for the cost...Phranken wasn't listed. After some furtling around I found it under "Custom".

I select it and initially it looks like 1250 MC for the set. Bit pricey, $7 for a colour scheme in a computer game that's still in beta......'nevermind' thinks I, 'I'll at least slap it on the one I use the most and get the most out of it'.

Then I notice the colours that go with the scheme.....they have price tags too. Another 1000 MC -each-.

'Maybe a bug' I thought, so I tried it with several other mechs without purchasing. All showed the same cost, totalling 4250 MC or around $20 or so (very approx).

Now, microtransactions are a great way to make some money for your MMO game. But this isnt terribly Micro.

As the Phranken camo scheme is somewhat more costly than the rest (most being 750 MC rather than 1250) I would have assumed you get something more out of it, such as the colours that are attributed to it? It would have made a nice bundle that way. Sadly, given the silly cost, I won't be purchasing any camo changes for now.

The only item that seems to make sense (costwise) at the moment is additional bayspaces at 300 MC each.

Could I suggest that Camo schemes come with a small set of colours each as a "boxed set"? That would make somewhat more sense in purchasing terms and possibly promote more purchases of them.

[sycocys]

It seems that right now they aren't very interested in micro sales. Ultimately I guess it is their choice, but like you their ability to pillage money from my pockets is greatly reduced with their pricing scheme. Simply nothing there at a price that would entice me to purchase any more MC other than bays - which I don't need for a while.

If the cockpit items or paints didn't cost so much they'd still be getting a minimum packages a month out of me at the least.

[Dasein]

I wonder about prices too, why just to paint your own mech costs the same as to buy hero mech, that goes with unique variant lifetime bonus for c-bills and exp and also unique skin.

[Beeman]

People have actually complained a fair bit about this. They might be considering lowering the prices or providing some kind of package deals whenever they implement UI2.0. At least, that's what I gathered from a recent ask the devs thread. I could've misinterpreted that, though, I ain't too bright.


But yeah, the prices for colors and camo are waaaaaaaaaaaay too high. If they lowered the cost of each...by at least fifty to seventy-five percent, you'd see people buying them left and right. Given that the smallest MC purchase point is seven dollars, they'd still be making a decent amount of money. They could also give us access to the colors that hero mechs are painted. For example, buying Fang and Flame would grant access to that shade of red, blue and black.

I mean, you're already spending a fair amount for the unique looking mech with a nice cbill bonus(that counts as a variant for the ridiculous three-mech grind, too!) so it wouldn't kill them to give us access to those colors for other mechs as well.

Like I said in another thread, more bang for your buck=more bucks spent.

[Noth]

They are going to be doing camo and color bundles, along with free camo and colors from the faction system. The colors really aren't that expensive considering that once you have them, you have them for everything, where as many games you buy a color and you only have it for what you bought it on.

[sycocys]

1k MC - last I recall the price was for premium colors - isn't even remotely enticing whether it is permanent for all mechs or not.

At least not to me I guess, I've got money to spend, more paint options would be one thing I'd spend it on if I didn't feel like I was getting taken to the cleaners on them. 30+ mechs 8 paint colors, just don't feel the value in buying more mc for such a high cost yet trivial thing.

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I do understand the logic behind their idea of once you buy it you own it, but at the same time their pricing is a dissentive towards future purchases. I'd gladly buy most of the colors and probably some patterns, but for something I only get to see in the mechlab the prices are far, far too steep.

Even for the cockpit items, the price might be okay if you only played 1-4 mechs, but I'd like to toss something in each of my mechs, long term players are bound to have more bays and wanting more options and ways to customize their roster's look.

Cheaper prices might make less per sale, but will make them far more sales and get more people interested in their system which builds them up to getting the more premium fluff.

Edited by sycocys, 15 March 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[Jetfire]

There is now enough content now that they could and should certainly drop prices a bit so more players bite. I think in general they need to do this with Mech's as well, but this may be something they wait until launch for as the current player base is full of die hards, while the Launch group will be normal F2P players with lower spending tolerances.

[sycocys]

I'm pretty much a die hard, but I can still do math.

Then when you work that against something you cant even see in the actual game like the paint and the only people that get to enjoy it is your team for the 20 second before they run off to never never land, the value just doesn't add up.

For a person like me that wants to spend, and would willingly buy more fluff things if they weren't $1+ each they are missing out on a lot of residual sales. Instead of spending $15+ a month buying paints and silly fluff items for my garage full of mechs, I'm spending $0 a month waiting for a change in the pricing, something I really would like, or a sale.

And when I'm not making monthly purchases for fluff, I'm not building up that extra MC that would probably convince me to drop a little bit extra to snag a hero mech.