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Twenty bucks was too high of a price.
KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl
Posts: 357 Arc User
For the new level 30 level-up item.
Level 30 doesn't take that long to get to. In most games when they sell you a level-up item it's taking away a considerable chunk of leveling up time. Here it really isn't, even for new players. Also in other games the objective is generally to only ever sell a small number of these items to players, hence why some games charge something like 50 dollars for one. In CO the objective should be repeat sales to the same player.
Had this item cost 10 dollars, I would have bought one and used it on a character that is already level 20. However, at 20 bucks it prevented that impulse buy. 10 dollars would have been a better price, seeing as this is a limited time item that is unlikely to see a sale. 20 dollars would have been okay for a permanent store item that is likely to see 50% off sales.
If this limited time offer was to be a "trial run" then it should have been a trial run using the on-sale price of 10 dollars.
Even then, a normal price of 10 dollars would see constant sales, with an on-sale price of 5 dollars seeing these things fly off the shelves. A hundred bucks... 10 of my alts skipping low level stuff? Sounds great! 5 of them skipping it? eh.... 20 of them skipping it?!?!?! TAKE MY MONEY
Level 30 doesn't take that long to get to. In most games when they sell you a level-up item it's taking away a considerable chunk of leveling up time. Here it really isn't, even for new players. Also in other games the objective is generally to only ever sell a small number of these items to players, hence why some games charge something like 50 dollars for one. In CO the objective should be repeat sales to the same player.
Had this item cost 10 dollars, I would have bought one and used it on a character that is already level 20. However, at 20 bucks it prevented that impulse buy. 10 dollars would have been a better price, seeing as this is a limited time item that is unlikely to see a sale. 20 dollars would have been okay for a permanent store item that is likely to see 50% off sales.
If this limited time offer was to be a "trial run" then it should have been a trial run using the on-sale price of 10 dollars.
Even then, a normal price of 10 dollars would see constant sales, with an on-sale price of 5 dollars seeing these things fly off the shelves. A hundred bucks... 10 of my alts skipping low level stuff? Sounds great! 5 of them skipping it? eh.... 20 of them skipping it?!?!?! TAKE MY MONEY
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Being an item that is about saving yourself grinding time to get closer to a max level character quickly, it shouldn't have been priced based on players that are subscribed who get more character slots for each max level character. It should have been priced based on players that have to buy each character slot on top of this item.
Anyways, I've never timed how long it took me to get to level 30. How long does it take the average player, without double xp boost, maybe some nemesis heirlooms and the occasional Smash alert bonus?
If I wanted this boost (which I don't), and I paid the $20 for it, and later it was cheaper, I'd just chalk that up to my getting to use it before all those cheap plebians.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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If this game had a level cap of 50 and $20 brought you to 40, I can see it worth it. But for the price now, Cryptic thinks its worth the price when it really just isn't. No game company is worth it. That's why the biggest games out there now are sold on the cheap end. Because selling cheap makes more money in the long run.
If Cryptic wants to charge those prices, then they better start walking the walk rather than talking the talk. And from the last years all we've gotten was talk without any big game to show for it. We've put the money down already. Use it.
Getting a character slot, two aura packs and gear for that amount of ZEN is all well and good, but what if the player doesn't care about all of those and is only interested in getting their level 6 to 30 without having to go through repeated levelling content?
You're comparing apples to oranges. There's no real way to quantify and really appraise the value of something like this. It really just boils down to personal opinion. The general consensus around here seems to be $20 bucks is too high. The more reasonable suggestion seems somewhere along 1000Z.
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Remember that old maxim of economics, "The value of a thing is what that thing will bring." If somebody buys it, then to that person it was indeed worth $20. To me, it's of no value whatsoever, at any price.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Okay, you must intentionally be acting like an idiot.
This doesn't make sense if you're talking about the XP boost being the "original item". For starters the instant 30 item allows for a huge leap to level 30 right down from 6 instantly. There's no way that an item with a much bigger, instant bonus like that than what the XP boosts give is going to cost less than the latter.
Remember, all absolute statements are wrong. Including this one.
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Oh come on Jon, you know the point he was making. Have you ever seen a cheap car with rims on it that probably cost more than the car itself? The only real problem with his statement, which you forgot to point out in your haste to be "clever" and contrarian, was that the cost of the initial thing is variable. Let me explain:
Maybe a silver player intends to use this on one of those first two characters they have, both of which use the character slots you start with. In this case the thing being enhanced cost nothing... free slots, free archetypes.
On the other hand, maybe I intend to use this item on a paid archetype residing in an extra slot that I purchased? Now the price of the initial thing suddenly jumped. What if I'm one of those crazy people who bought a FF slot at full price??? Now the initial thing is a whole fifty bucks! I mean, at this point we don't even have to figure out how costume sets that you bought specifically to be used with that character factor in because we've gone over twice as far as the target amount.
So while the saying can have merit, the fact that the price of the initial thing can be as low as zero or higher than fifty bucks means it doesn't work so well here.
Things should be priced at a price where they will sell the best without giving up any potential income. I feel like 20 bucks is just too far above this equilibrium. Like Buxom said, this needs to be priced at impulse buy prices... because once you make the price so high that people have to take time to think about it, you run the risk that they will have already reached level 30 before they've even come to a decision. The real price for this is 5 dollars, which means a regular price of 10 with the opportunity for sales.
Biff, the reason I say that it should have been that price now is because if this is meant to be some sort of "trial run" then they need conditions to mirror what they're trying to test. If I'm trying to see if ten frogs can knock over a cardboard wall, do I put 5 frogs into a container with a cardboard box? They should have set the price at five bucks so they can see how well this would do during a sale, which is when companies make money. By putting it at 20 they've distorted the results so badly that they might have actually gotten more accurate data from a forum poll.
Hell just the idea that this might be a test run means that people are already more likely to take a wait-and-see approach... so you know... how many characters could you get to level 30 during this test run?
But 5 bucks I think is a swing way too far in the other direction, I think. The item is mainly meant for people who already have a lot of characters. People who have been through all the content dozens of times. Those people are already invested in the game. Those people will spend money for the convenience of halving their leveling time.
At $5, what people are calling an Impulse Buy, it might seem like a good idea, but say you get new people buying into this item. You get people new to the game, thrust them into level 30, giving them way too many options (if they're freeform) and potentially stuffing up their builds? Or you get a guy who buys level 30, gets to 40, doesn't really get the whole leveling experience and building experience and gets prematurely bored? You get someone who quits early, and while you sold one $5 item, you missed out on selling costumes and other things that player might have enjoyed.
There's a balance to be struck, and a high-priced item will at worst get people not to buy it. A low-priced item might get people to buy it and then quit early. Sure, there's a thousand other scenarios inbetween, but we're just armchair marketeers and the people selling this item have an inside track specific to this game that could probably change your perspective on the cost of this item.
We both don't agree with their pricing, but not both of us are saying flat-out that their pricing was wring.
This item, which seems like a low-risk item for the developers, I think may be spot-on. They get a chance to change it, make some tweaks, sell it as a different item later on once more data has been gathered. I say, let them do their thing! I like that they're trying new things!
At the end of the day, we both agree on the topic of this post. But I won't be too critical with them.
However I don't agree with the reasoning being that just because you shelled out a significant amount of cash for a paid-for AT or Freeform slot, the instant-30 item should be dirt cheap in comparison. Considering that item is able to give an instant fast-track from level 6 to 30 in a blink of an eye and the relevant amount of grinding involved gets completely nullified, $5 comes off as way too low for that kind of service bonus.
$5 is also gold stipend value and I doubt Cryptic intends to have gold players potentially pumping out instant 30s on a monthly basis too easily with just stipend.
This is where we once again have our different opinions about "new players". I think people have the brain power to handle the jump to level 30, and I also know how extremely far from "conventional build wisdom" you can stray before your build is actually "stuffed". That's actually kind of irrelevant when you think about it though... will new players actually be facing this problem?
I would find it very odd that a new player would immediately grab the level skip. Far as I can tell when people start this game they have no intention of spending a single dime until the game proves to them that it's worth it. These people are likely to be using archetypes, not freeforms... I mean, do you think it's common that someone immediately subscribes or buys a 50 dollar freeform slot when they start playing the game? Since they're playing archetypes, there's no chance of messing up the build. We also know that archetypes are fairly humdrum, especially at low levels. If anything, it's likely that a quick jump will garner player interest because they get to see how all the powers start to come together - the low levels is where people get the impression that this game is just about spamming one button over and over. Even if they don't "get it" right away... you know, how to play a lvl 30 archetype, it won't really be an issue - remember how this game is really easy? It still is. An inferno can get very far just using Fireball and Fire Strike, the two powers they start out with.
As for "bypassing the leveling experience", if they value it then they won't skip it. A lot of players don't value it - they see just another "run around and do dumb quests" mmo and wonder why they need to bother with it. Show them more powers, show them faster travel powers, allow them to engage content in a more capable form, get them closer to the point where the game actually starts to show them something worth spending money on.
I've known a lot of players who got bored of this game because they had to go through that "leveling experience" and they never got to the point where the game would have really caught their interest.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I saw people messing their ATs with ranking energy builders and taking quite useless specialisations. Not exactly a FF level of what you can mess, but makes some hit on performance.
Putting 4 points into your energy builder will not send your Archetype into useless status. Hell, not spending any Advantage points at all won't even send your Archetype into useless status. Come on now.
And skipping to level 30 is going to cause someone to take a wrong travel power how? You pick those at level 6 man... if anything skipping to 30 gets you closer to your second one, so in case you chose the wrong first one you can rectify the mistake.
Also, don't forget: Retcons still exist.
PS - I don't actually subscribe to the notion that TPs can be "wrong ones". Having played archetypes extensively I can assure you they all work just fine.
Yea I totally agree, There is no wrong choice when you pick a travel power. If you felt you made a wrong choice you can always reverse the change via Retcon just like you mentioned or spend resources it's much easier to put the Travel Powers on top of your powers list so if you decide to swap them out you can undo it and pick something else without having to reset the whole character build.
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