Perhaps this not the best apple to apple game comparison but I'm liking how Marvel Heroes is doing their playable hero sales.
They have a huge sale package on the next year's worth of heroes they are releasing Their advance package release which is up for presale at $130 with an estimate regular $425 value (granted the that each hero package typically runs $15-20'ish US$.. and $425 is slightly inflated with the inclusion of all the other digital goods) but essentially the presale should saves you around 30-50% per hero in the long run plus a bunch of virtual goods - Not to mention the sale was only announced this week and those people that buy before Dec 31st get an additional free hero package that is about to be released... talk about bundling for value
https://www.marvelhe...g-advance-packs
Okay if you don't want to buy the package of all the Heroes or even the small team package, there's individual packages that you can buy. New Heroes typically come out once a month or longer. With new Heroes they do leaks as to who's coming out next a couple months in advance, followed by forums threads and information releases, videos, etc. There's also testing of them on the public servers ahead of release and the public test lets you try the hero out just before the pre-sale ends. Individual pre-sale on the individual hero's also carry a small discount on it (10'ish %) much less than the massive package but still a sale promoting their impending release.
Also people who pre-purchase don't get the hero earlier than others. Everyone gets the hero (or can get them) at the release date. So huge price breaks, lots of in-game usable virtual goods
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Translating some of this into MWO:
Lets start having specific mech packages (e.g. Shadow Hawk package) - You buy this package and you get all 3 mechs for either a slightly reduced priced or at the Best MC/$ ratio you have and toss in some extra virtual goods (artillery strikes, UAV's,etc, couple million C-bills and some premium time (3-7 days). Which i think is a great way to get people to use them more (and potential buy more of these things)
The giant pre-sale package is okay but it needs to offer a stronger discount value. Previous packs over the clan packs seemed to be better priced (Although we can assume only at this point that clan mechs will cost higher MC/c-bills than IS mechs) but at $30 per tier compared to Phoenix's $20/tier means that clan tech and mechs should have 50% higher in-game costs over IS.
But can we say clan stuff should have a much greater premium over IS when they are some what "balanced" for game play. Granted that clan mechs has some better omni point fitment over IS but IMHO doesn't demand a 50% higher premium, maybe 20%.
Really the only major selling points is to gain access to the clan mechs much earlier than their official roll out dates and pay for that access. While the extras included are nice we have no idea what some of them are nor their gameplay experience value. Again please also add some consumables, c-bills, and other items.
Since Community warfare is NOT coming out before you start rolling Clan Mechs out and since you are not enforcing clan mechs only with Clan affiliation then there is no reason to put so many Clan mechs out in a 8 mech package so soon and only to have them trickle them out for public consumption so slowly. I think it really demoralizing to have Masakari and Mad Cat running around while they are not general public purchasable for 6+ months,... end of 2014 / early 2015 (assuming you have a similar release time frame as the phoenix package)
If you like to reward pre-sale package people with earlier access to mech then give earlier access by about month or two ahead of time public sale release.
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RG Notch, on 18 December 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:
I like your argument, but just for context and perspective I'd like to point to the US$900 Conquer Pack from Path of Exile, and to the US$10,000 Wing Commander Pack from StarCitizen. I'd also like to point out that StarCitizen isn't even playable yet; thus we have no idea of quality, balance, or developer responsiveness. PGI selling US$500 digital trophies actually isn't that bad.
