169 replies to this topic

[Terror Teddy]

A good example on pricing for vanity stuff was STO and CO since you got them in nice bundles and got to keep them on everything.

EVE online with their 80$ monocle is the *** end of the spectrum.

If things were cheaper and I could put skins and camos even on hero mechs and founders I'd blow money like an badly recovering addict on mountains of coke for LOADS of camo skins.

And gimme a hot pink camo skin and teddy ears for my Atlas dammit.

[roguetrdr]

Have a look at planetside2 for how to do vanity items and microtransactions right.
Yeah I dropped $120 on this back on the first day of founders, but currently I'm not going to open my wallet again until it seems like I'm getting some value for money on MC transactions. Hell I'm even holding out on activating my premium time until I the game is a little more stable and there are more features.

PS2 I bought alpha squad for $40, within a week of release I had spent another $80 on station cash just to buy vanity items and weapon unlocks (which can be unlocked with in game currency).

EDIT: I'm an older gamer that has plenty of disposable income. I typically spend around $100-$200 a fortnight on games.

Edited by roguetrdr, 12 December 2012 - 04:23 AM.

[Sp4wNers]

Actually 30$ for Ilya? It's overpriced. For that money i can get new and good game from the store.

[aspect]

8CH Trooper, on 11 December 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

People will vote with their wallets, if the price is too high then sales will be slow, find the right price point sales will go up. f2p is a sales driven economic model, if MWO want's to be successful they will have to find out what the consumer wants at the price they are willing to pay. It's easier to sell a million of something for a dollar each than it is to sell one thing for a million dollars.

Everybody keeps saying things like this without actually having access to the sales numbers. What exactly makes all of you so sure that it ISN'T a success?

One of the devs said that the YLW was a huge success, and I'm inclined to agree given how many of them were seen in game. I played a match a few days ago where out of the 16 mechs present, THREE of them were muromets.

I know it's fun to pretend that nobody is buying MC or hero mechs, but based on what I actually see in-game that's simply not the case. Arguing that PGI doesn't understand economics and should adjust their pricing downward when you have literally ZERO sales data is absurd...maybe they should be adjusting the price UPWARDS in order to bring in more revenue? Have you conducted a pricing trial to find out? No?

I feel like there's a lot of people on these forums who are starting to figure out basic economics and are desperate to share their new-found realizations with the world...why else would any rational person assume that nobody at PGI has heard of a demand function or a revenue curve? Everyone I know with a computer science or engineering degree has taken at least one economics class, and that sort of thing is covered in like the first week.

[Chief 117]

I am waiting for the same thing that happened to Battle Forge happen here, basically all prices there were reduced by 75 %, which made me a very happy panda

Edited by Chief 117, 12 December 2012 - 04:44 AM.

[John Horrigan]

yes they are overpriced .. waiting to spend my mc until they change to more appealing rates

[Chief 117]

John Horrigan, on 12 December 2012 - 04:49 AM, said:

yes they are overpriced .. waiting to spend my mc until they change to more appealing rates

Let us hope that happens before the Clan Wars. According to my calculations a Daishi will cost more than 50$

Edited by Chief 117, 12 December 2012 - 04:52 AM.

[Almeras]

aspect, on 12 December 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

One of the devs said that the YLW was a huge success, and I'm inclined to agree given how many of them were seen in game. I played a match a few days ago where out of the 16 mechs present, THREE of them were muromets.

I think alot of the guys in Hero mechs are founders who still have their Original MC and are currently unaware of the dollar conversion of MC. That'll start to change when people zero their MC accounts.

Next time you see a muromet driver ask him if he knows the dollar value of his mech.

[Terror Teddy]

Almeras, on 12 December 2012 - 04:57 AM, said:

I think alot of the guys in Hero mechs are founders who still have their Original MC and are currently unaware of the dollar conversion of MC. That'll start to change when people zero their MC accounts.

Yea, as long as I have the founders cash it's easy and the prices they have are bloody steep if we convert them.

30 USD for something that gives:
+30% cash
-Different Slot layout
-Inferior Slot layout (compared to some of the regular mechs)

Basically you pay 1 USD per percentage.

[Zaptruder]

Seraphims Blood, on 12 December 2012 - 03:15 AM, said:

at current prices I'm not spending $1 on this game

Setting aside that you've *already* spent $120... You're not spending $1 on this game, because you *can't* spend *just* $1 on this game.

[Joseph Mallan]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 11 December 2012 - 04:44 PM, said:

Ilya Muromets $29.95 yeah.,... bit overpriced

Specially for a Hero we have never heard of in 28 years of lore. I'm sorry PGI and other DEVs. But this game has a plethora of Heroes we have grown up with reading about. It cannot be helped that you don't have the selection of chassis that will give you the good heroes to choose from.

I Paid $25 for a Unique Orion that also came with Gen. Kerensky (so 2 minis)
I Paid $20 for a Jumping Hatchetman (normal Hatchetman was $13)
i think $30 is a bit much. Specially for a hero we never heard of.

[Hanabi]

I tend to agree, the game has been fun enough to play, even though this set of trial mechs is weak, and the last set was weaker. If the prices were a little lower could see spending the money to avoid some of this grind, but when not playing at all is only slightly less rewarding than playing in terms of the grind, well, it lowers the value of spending IRL money to avoid it. Lately I've had TERRIBLE crash to desktop, last patch wasn't quite as bad this one it's 50% of my games or so, yet this has increased my revenue generation because AFK and suicide farming may be a hard pill for me to swallow, CTD farming, well, that's not really my fault, I'm trying to play.

[aspect]

Jetfire, on 12 December 2012 - 04:10 AM, said:

Mech pricing seems fine, it is the vanity items that seem over priced. $20-30 for a Hero Mech with a lifetime bonus is a pretty good deal when you consider it is a F2P game. I mean a pack of Magic cards runs $3.50 and you would have to open an average of 8 packs to get a Mythic rare. So it is roughly in line with other pay to collect games that are successful.

However Paint needs to be MC to unlock colors and patterns, CB only to repaint.

Vanity items need to be in the 50 cent to 2 dollar range, especially if you expect me to deck all my mechs in banners and bobbleheads. They need to be impulse buys, ie, micro... transactions. If it costs more than a bottle of soda, I am pretty sure you can cease thinking of it as "micro".

Skins for your unlocked champions in LoL cost between $5 and $14. They are 100% vanity items, and cannot be customized like camo, and cannot be purchased with anything but real money. Out of every 5v5 game I play (not at the high levels), there's 3-5 people using skins on the champion they happen to be playing.

Also, LoL is certainly the most successful F2P title ever.

*shrug*

Edited by aspect, 12 December 2012 - 05:36 AM.

[Palmtree]

Users are more likely to spend MC on an Ilya or Christmas Lights when the MC has already been paid for (ie, sunk cost makes it cheaper at the margin). I'd expect the bottom of the market to fall out in about another month or so when the big founders who are spending run out of MC and do not buy/purchase items at the same rate as they are currently. I wouldn't expect a huge decrease in prices though regardless, because PGI probably realizes they will make more profit on a minority of large spenders than a majority of small spenders. That's how the model works. They're targeting the 20-40 crowd that has more money than time and is willing to pay as a result.

Edited by Palmtree, 12 December 2012 - 05:42 AM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Gnuz, on 12 December 2012 - 02:03 AM, said:

*Maybe*, if it came with a tabletop mini delivered by courier. I dunno what PGI are thinking atm.

IM thinking theyre thinking "if this is too pricey for you, this game aint for you"
Or thats what I get from the price scheme

aspect, on 12 December 2012 - 04:39 AM, said:

Everybody keeps saying things like this without actually having access to the sales numbers. What exactly makes all of you so sure that it ISN'T a success?

One of the devs said that the YLW was a huge success, and I'm inclined to agree given how many of them were seen in game. I played a match a few days ago where out of the 16 mechs present, THREE of them were muromets.

I know it's fun to pretend that nobody is buying MC or hero mechs, but based on what I actually see in-game that's simply not the case. Arguing that PGI doesn't understand economics and should adjust their pricing downward when you have literally ZERO sales data is absurd...maybe they should be adjusting the price UPWARDS in order to bring in more revenue? Have you conducted a pricing trial to find out? No?

I feel like there's a lot of people on these forums who are starting to figure out basic economics and are desperate to share their new-found realizations with the world...why else would any rational person assume that nobody at PGI has heard of a demand function or a revenue curve? Everyone I know with a computer science or engineering degree has taken at least one economics class, and that sort of thing is covered in like the first week.

dev alt detected
j/k

[Esarai]

MWO has me officially in the camp where I'd be willing to purchase items for it, except there's a major problem. The prices are ridiculous. $30 for an in-game mech? The opportunity cost from such a purchase does not justify the purchase to begin with. There are so many other things I could do with $30 that would last a lot longer.

It's been mentioned before that the crux of the F2P model is impulse buying. The audience this game caters to must be rich indeed, $30 is not a sum of money I can impulsively drop. $5 dollars, yeah. $10, maybe, if the item's good enough.

Wizard Steve, on 12 December 2012 - 02:10 AM, said:

Anyhoo, in before this-discussion-is-meaningless-without-data.

Lol this thread is the data--users making it known that the pricing of the game prevents them from purchasing its items. I think the overall aim is to attempt to convince PGI that their demand function at this point in time is elastic, and they could likely boost revenue further if they reduced their prices.

[pedropars]

Got to agree with the OP,i had made a similar topic awhile ago,PGI is realy charging too much for MC,for the moment i will buy other games instead of MC when PGI figure out that most casuals are not willing to pay the price of a brand new game for some MC and lower the price then i might buy some MC.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

They will either figure it out or crash and burn like every other failed F2P title. I bet they are already bringing in far less than what they could have been. I honestly just wish they sold a box instead if they were doing to do this crap though. They're gouging you for bay slots on top of making you fund 3 rides per Mech, and then expecting you to pay a fee to paint each one, then again if you want to edit changes to any of them. It's all a load of shat. They're overpricing their Premium too, but that price point would have been acceptable if it wasn't a required buff or if they weren't doing all this other crap(Pick one). But I'm not going to pay 750mc x 3 to color 3 of my Mechs black, sorry. Even if it was 1 price to affect the set, it'd be hard to swallow... because I'll always need bay slots and those are 300 each. Why would you buy a paint job over a mech slot? And if I ever edited it, I'd have to pay more! I'll be using the MC that could have went to cool paints, on bay slots instead. Keep in mind the bay slots are a lot less.(So if they just made the slots free, more people would buy paint, and they'd actually eat MORE MC funding out of you) An even better solution is to drop this 3 req tree crap for Mechs so people can just buy the one they want, paint it, and play it, without ever having to care about those other variants. I like the idea of the 3 talent tree system itself though, because it forces variety, but the cash shop and mechbay slots make it a real pain. 750 becomes 2250 if you want to paint all 3. 300mc for the slot becomes 900. It's a load of shat. I'm not going to waste half my bank on paint. 10 bay slots are 3kMC! Why is this BS fee here? Seriously, refund everyone that paid for slots, and just drop the fee! You're already selling variants, hero variants, paint, Premium, and now cockpit stuff too...

Edited by Bluten, 12 December 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Urza Mechwalker]

If you check normal mech prices in MC and recolorign your mech then sure thigns are quite expensive. The only thing I fing reasonably priced are exaclty the hero mechs (still on the a bit expensive side, but closer to acceptable than other things) That because they can save me several hours per week of money grinding.

I just wish the hero mechs money making efficiency was as high as WoT premium mechs ( rougly 3 times more than current)

[Stormfury]

Asmosis, on 11 December 2012 - 04:58 PM, said:

Still, you need to consider the age of the average battletech fan. Its an old IP, so has a decent amount of people in their 20's, 30's, 40's etc who have greater disposable income than some other games.

This also means we're smarter with our money (on average) with years of wisdom. Not to mention some have kids, college tuition, wives, etc. In a down economy am I going to spend $25 on a Ilya or feed the family?

$7 for Xmas lights? Seriously?

$1-2 for items like this tops and you'd sell a lot more.

The worst part of this is the casual/new user's are stuck in trial mechs for 100+ matches before ever being able to utilize this so the ONLY player you're able to sell these to are the founders/hard core fans. The free to play model is all about offering up these types of purchases to the masses not an exclusive club.

PGI has screwed up with their pricing model, not once but twice. Forcing players to pay for premium or initial mechs is killing the new player experience and literally turns MWO into a pay to play game. That was the first mistake and now it appears they have shifted to selling cockpit, skins and cammo items to make money only it's priced like the dreaded monocle.