I want to spend money on this game because I like it and I didn't have to buy a box which means $50 in my pocket plus about $15 a month. I want to spend that money but at the current prices that money is staying where it is. If they want it they will have to lower their prices or keep them and make the buys account wide.
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elenoe8Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
However given the flurry of posts on the forums I don't think I am alone in thinking the pricing is too high. But it could just be a vocal minority, who knows.
I think it is, they have experience with this to set price exactly to make profit big. But either way, no need to be upset on the forum. If they make highest profit like this. It will stay anyway. If they do not, they will lower, again, no matter other thing. So why not simply vote with your money and just stay with that.
I consider EA games overpriced, but should I complain to EA? Or convincing other not to buy their games? Why to do that? I simply wait when merchandise costs what I think it should and then buy it. If it never happen I will never buy. How hard could be just follow that
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perfectself82Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I just tell it like it is, its funny when people get hit with the truth they don't want to hear they start stammering and stuttering and talking about red herrings and hyperboles and emotionally charged...the fact is, so many people are complaining about "pay2win" and "outragesous" prices about a game that is 100% free to play. Its insulting to see people complain about a certain feature they want not being cheaper or free...when if they had a proper perspective they would realize they are getting a good deal.
You can't argue with people like this. They will twist everything you say to fit their agenda all while spouting platitudes and throwing out straw men as fast as they can. They can't be wrong, confirmation bias won't allow it.
Yes the game is 'free' to play. No that doesn't mean charging $10 for a few character bound bank slots, or a character bound bag, is a good deal. Many of us are ready and willing to spend (more) money on this game, many of us spend significant amounts of money on other 'free' to play games very regularly. We are not being cheap, we are not asking for handouts, we are sharing our opinion that the prices as they stand now are not compelling enough for us to spend more money on this 'free' to play game at this time.
Obviously some folks are going to fall on the extreme ends of both spectrums, some calling for everything to be free and some others telling everyone just how lucky we all are that they only want to charge us JUST $30 for a mount.
Love the game, love the folks at Cryptic and I look forward to continuing to support them in the coming years as I have in the past. Just don't feel the current shop items have very good value, and thats just the Zen shop - saying nothing about the insane Astral Diamond price points.
If someone with MY history of throwing money at them feels this way...
What really annoys me is that it says for the Guardian package "Buy now $59.99" and then when I go to buy it it costs €55.99 which is $73.40... Not sure why I have to pay a 22% increase.
Having 4 24 slot bags is not a need. It's a want. And really isn't even all that necessary. I bought 1 bag. More than enough when you add in the two you get from questing. You can play just fine without spending 40 dollars on bags. What are you doing that you need 126 inventory slots?
And if you don't want to gamble on the lockboxes you don't have to.
Having 1-3 is a NEED, not a want.
I'm not complaining about the NEED to buy bags, just the price. I realize they need to make money, but 10$ per bag PER character, is beyond absurd. This is a game where you hit 60 within a day, and reroll an alt, or spend money to get endgame gear, because you can't get endgame gear enchanted without SPENDING money, or playing 2-3 years straight farming every day.
I don't care that endgame is 100% pay to win, I just want to play the game without restrictions, the bags are a MAJOR restriction.
The most successful online video game in the world is a F2P game. While League of Legends is a different genre, I believe that a translation to an MMO would not be too difficult to work out. But before they can fix their prices, they have to fix their business model. I've personally never played a PWE game. But I've never once heard anything good about them from the western market. I think the reason we are seeing so many threads about this is because Cryptic did a really good job. Even though this game is 4E. Even though this game left out some of the "utility" traditionally present in DnD. When I first logged into this game every piece felt like Neverwinter Nights. From art to dialogue. So the majority player base, us middle classers, have the very best interest at heart and want to see this game thrive and prosper to levels no other F2P mmo has ever gone. People play, and spend money on, League of Legends because they love the game, Riot has a completely open line of communication with their entire player base. Riot has made League of Legends our game, we move its development, we decide what direction it will push its art, its content.
Then all PWE has to do, is listen to its community, and provide a steady, uninterrupted, cyclical release of Zen Store content on a weekly or bi-weekly rotation. Offering cool items from exclusive race skins, tatoos, hairstyles, clothing, weapon, and armor skins, ect... Price them reasonably, $20-$25 being the cost of the most high end and exclusive items ( like special items that will only be available during a holiday and such, and of course the epic quality items), $10-$15 for the mid grade items, and a flat rate of $5 dollars for additional usability and functionality like bag and bank space. I would also suggest completely getting rid of AD, and just allowing players to buy things like additional bag space, bank space, and the like for large, but a reasonable amount of gold. Respecs should never cost a player Zen. I'd also suggest making the large purchases, epic mounts and the like, as account bound, and the mid grade and lower purchases character bound.
In summary. Establish a clear, open, and two way line of communication with your customers>Provide a steady stream of reasonably priced Zen content that is directly driven by the player base>profit for years to come as the largest F2P MMO on the planet.
I agree with the OP. I spend money in MMO's. I'm fine with the shop content and i'm doing okay for disposable income. But these prices are taking the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. I could afford to buy stuff but I'm not as i don't like having the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> taken out of me. Prices need cutting by at least 50%, probably more. If they were I'd have bought all kinds of stuff and the company would be making money out of me. As it is they are making nothing.
I totally agree with this guy.....I would have done spent 20 dollars and probably another 50 out of my next pay check if things were cut in half......The prices are so ridiculous that I wont spend a dime......
I can't even spend one dollar on this game in its current state.
If I do, it'll say to PWE that it's okay to price things like this.
I spent $100 while game was in closed beta. Have now been in the game only a week, and have almost Zero Zen left. I agree. They got my $100--they won't get one nickel more!
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ozewaMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited May 2013
I just now realized that the "Greater Bag of Holding" which is not covered in the 4E SRD, but if it was then it would be able to carry like ten times as much as the regular Bag of Holding.
So either it should be more in line with 3.5E SRD, which a Greater Bag of Holding (Type 4) can hold equivalent to roughly 9 Adventurer's Backpacks, or just a static 60 inventory spaces.
President of the Amnian Illithid Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Please spread the word that the term "Mind Flayer" is a derogatory term to our kind.
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ganzor123Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 10Arc User
edited May 2013
1/3 or 1/2 should be fair. A mount in a game costing MORE than a new game? =/
Ive spent 20 dollars in Zen. I bought a character slot ( you get two ) and a few keys for the boxes. I spent about 8 dollars or so out of the 20.
So far I have not needed another bag.
I don't understand why people are complaining about cash shop prices for a game that is completely FREE. NO gated content what so ever.
Cash shop prices are fine. Sheesh!
Ive spent 20 dollars in Zen. I bought a character slot ( you get two ) and a few keys for the boxes. I spent about 8 dollars or so out of the 20.
So far I have not needed another bag.
I don't understand why people are complaining about cash shop prices for a game that is completely FREE. NO gated content what so ever.
Cash shop prices are fine. Sheesh!
Oh and my mount I will buy with in game gold when I have enough. You dont have to buy the 40 dollar mount you know? If you even need mounts at all.
I love when people define "fair" as "the amount of money I want to spend, divided by the number of items I want to own".
In reality, "fair" is the point where if you raised the price one cent, you'd lose money because you sold less, and if you lowered it one cent, you'd lose money without making it up in increased sales.
Cutting your prices in half only makes sense if it more than doubles your sales. PWE has 12 active games currently; they have vast reams of data on where to price these items based on their ingame utility. If you don't like the prices, you don't have to buy the items; there is nothing in the store that you can't do without.
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ganzor123Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 10Arc User
I'm one of those guy that don't mind paying money to get stuff from the cash shops, but with this game everything seems way to high in price and not worth it. People who bought founder packs have to buy a bigger bag, are you serious? That said, i'll be enjoying my free ride up to 60 and quitting the game after that, you're not going to get a dime from me with these ripoffs.
I love when people define "fair" as "the amount of money I want to spend, divided by the number of items I want to own".
In reality, "fair" is the point where if you raised the price one cent, you'd lose money because you sold less, and if you lowered it one cent, you'd lose money without making it up in increased sales.
Cutting your prices in half only makes sense if it more than doubles your sales. PWE has 12 active games currently; they have vast reams of data on where to price these items based on their ingame utility. If you don't like the prices, you don't have to buy the items; there is nothing in the store that you can't do without.
People keep making the argument that because PWE has "data", they know better.
EVERY PWE game has ridiculously high cash prices for their respective cash shops. To have the counterpoint data, they would have had to, at some point, have data to compare with. Honestly, I don't understand where they have come up with the prices they do - they are by far higher than any other cash shop based MMO that I can think of.
Unless they have at some point sold MMO cash shop objects for consistently less than their current model, they do not have "the data". Maybe they ran some sort of research project whereby users were polled for prices they would be willing to pay, but I have certainly never been involved in such a thing, nor have I ever read anything similar (which you would expect to see given the consistency with which people complain about PWE pricing models).
Feedback on forums is really the only relevant feedback that they get about their pricing models and the reasons why they do or don't sell well. Whether an item sells well or not can be for a number of reasons, most broadly because it is not good value for money (either too expensive, or not useful/attractive enough/doesn't fulfill a need). Just not buying something is not good feedback, unless PWE knows WHY you didn't buy it. So, stop telling people not to come to the forums and complain about why they dislike the current pricing models; those sorts of people are doing more for the longevity of the game than those people who don't buy something and say nothing at all.
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stasispostMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 4Arc User
edited May 2013
Since this thread answered a question I had about whether or not bags on the zen market were account wide and PWE seems to actually be reading it, here are my two cents.
First, the shop should state clearly whether something is account or character specific. Second, I would love to see an option to buy a bag of holding account wide. I'd pay $10 right now if I knew it would carry across characters. I'd actually pay a bit more. I like to make alts and $10 for bag convenience for a single character feels too steep at the moment.
On that note, $5 for two more character slots is completely reasonable and I'll be getting one (or more) of those eventually. This game gives a lot for free and it's reasonable to spend some $ on the experience. But I want to spend Zen on upgrading my Neverwinter account as a whole, not a single character.
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sarsparilla1Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 27Arc User
edited May 2013
$10 per bag, $40 for certain companions all seem a bit ridiculous to me. I agree the prices overall are too high. GW2 does it better. I play both games but spend at least 20 bucks a month there as a thank you sub and get gems to do whatever with. I'm not sure I'll do that here if I feel they're trying to nickel and dime me to death like Sony. Also, drop a bunch of purple chests, make the keys real money purchases, and make the chests impossible to delete so they take up a bank slot or bag slot... this is the stuff that makes me not want to give them any money. The shenanigans of trying to milk me... I don't like it.
Anyone who says FTP is better for the consumer is delusional. I miss subscription models where I could actually do most everything without spending money. The problem with ANY FTP game is that 10% (or less) of the player base has to pick up the slack for the cheap as <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> majority. Its bull...
That said, this and Star Trek are the only two FTP mmos that make me hesitant to spend money...because the prices feel like a rip off. Mind you I still do...shame on me...but I at least feel guilty about it, and have most likely spent all I will spend on this game now that I have the basics(no doubt ST will keep at me with new ship releases, the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>) ...the other frills are just too expensive...10$ for a random mix of profession <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, most of which won't even be useful? Been there, done that...
Ok, here is my problem with that argument. PWE is a big company, and can pay other companies for big information.
EA is also a big company, and can pay other companies for big information.
So why, why on this green earth, would those service competing services come up with VASTLY different price points for nearly identical goods and services? Especially when SWTOR cost $80 million just to get the license and another $220 million just to push it out the door, and another $40 million to convert to F2P?
I'm quite serious, double or triple the cost to the end user when you compare SWTOR to Neverwinter.
So how do you account for that discrepancy between the pricing of the two services? It is a greater discrepancy than a $15 a month fee can account for, so then we can break it down into different cases.
* One or the other has faulty information
* They interpreted the same information entirely differently
* One or the other just doesn't care about the information
* One or the other is asking entirely different questions
I feel like SWTOR is still doing a great job building a relationship with me as a customer, whereas I feel like I got very little value for the Guardian Pack I bought on Neverwinter and that the drastic price differential for basic things like inventory space with the lack of an account based unlock as an option leads me to believe that not only does PWE not want any of my money, that they would probably prefer it if I was no longer a customer.
Not kidding, when I look at the inventory options available to me, I can get 30 slots of inventory space for every character on my account in SWTOR for just a tiny bit more than it costs for 24 slots on a single character in Neverwinter. Don't even get me started on the dismally small bank space allocation. Then you throw into the mix the COMPLETE lack of communication on just about every issue except for server downtime and other ritual minutia. I don't really see what they're trying to accomplish or what sort of customer they're trying to attract.
You're comparing against an F2P model that charged access to the Flashpoints (dungeons), charged for you to roll on loot in the Flashpoints and then charged you too equip said loot unless you paid the subscription fee.
I'd much rather be unable to roll for loot because I don't have the bag space to pick it up than because I didn't pay for the right to roll on said loot.
And PWE does have the data for this, they've been running F2P games longer than most US companies that run F2P games, they have 2 markets and 5 years of experience in the youngest of those markets. They run regular sales on their games and have people who's job it is to analysis the data from all sales in the cash stores across all their games, and those people probably made more accurate predictions about sales of items from the Neverwinter C-Store than any of you.
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ganzor123Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 10Arc User
You're comparing against an F2P model that charged access to the Flashpoints (dungeons), charged for you to roll on loot in the Flashpoints and then charged you too equip said loot unless you paid the subscription fee.
I'd much rather be unable to roll for loot because I don't have the bag space to pick it up than because I didn't pay for the right to roll on said loot.
And PWE does have the data for this, they've been running F2P games longer than most US companies that run F2P games, they have 2 markets and 5 years of experience in the youngest of those markets. They run regular sales on their games and have people who's job it is to analysis the data from all sales in the cash stores across all their games, and those people probably made more accurate predictions about sales of items from the Neverwinter C-Store than any of you.
As far as I know we're the customers. They TRY to analyze what we will think is good. This is not good.
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rapticorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,078Arc User
I don't understand why people are complaining about cash shop prices for a game that is completely FREE. NO gated content what so ever.
Cash shop prices are fine. Sheesh!
Because then they would have to spend some money on the game. Can't have that!
As far as I know we're the customers. They TRY to analyze what we will think is good. This is not good.
Which is all very nice and good if you assume that their analysis is done for our benefit, the reality is that it's all a big game called "How much can we get away with charging?" (Protip - PWE is winning)
Prices of mounts and companions is way to high, I for one will never buy any of them. Having the game setup so if you want bag or bank space your paying real money and an AH that runs off a currencey which they are selling ( Cryptic run by goldfarmers?). It's price gouging. There's legit ways of doing things and then there's greed.
Folks, the prices are set according to the length of the content. 10% of the price would be ok if the game would last 10 times longer. It i not going to happen. This game will slowly loose customers when everyone are lv 60 with 2 alts and there is no new end game content. Only then will you start seeing 50% off only this weekend promotions etc. Don't expect this to be a game you will play as long as WOW. Buy only what makes difference, char slots, bags and enjoy the content. In the end you spent maybe 60$ and you got to play for a few months.
Since this thread answered a question I had about whether or not bags on the zen market were account wide and PWE seems to actually be reading it, here are my two cents.
First, the shop should state clearly whether something is account or character specific. Second, I would love to see an option to buy a bag of holding account wide. I'd pay $10 right now if I knew it would carry across characters. I'd actually pay a bit more. I like to make alts and $10 for bag convenience for a single character feels too steep at the moment.
On that note, $5 for two more character slots is completely reasonable and I'll be getting one (or more) of those eventually. This game gives a lot for free and it's reasonable to spend some $ on the experience. But I want to spend Zen on upgrading my Neverwinter account as a whole, not a single character.
Comments
I consider EA games overpriced, but should I complain to EA? Or convincing other not to buy their games? Why to do that? I simply wait when merchandise costs what I think it should and then buy it. If it never happen I will never buy. How hard could be just follow that
You can't argue with people like this. They will twist everything you say to fit their agenda all while spouting platitudes and throwing out straw men as fast as they can. They can't be wrong, confirmation bias won't allow it.
Yes the game is 'free' to play. No that doesn't mean charging $10 for a few character bound bank slots, or a character bound bag, is a good deal. Many of us are ready and willing to spend (more) money on this game, many of us spend significant amounts of money on other 'free' to play games very regularly. We are not being cheap, we are not asking for handouts, we are sharing our opinion that the prices as they stand now are not compelling enough for us to spend more money on this 'free' to play game at this time.
Obviously some folks are going to fall on the extreme ends of both spectrums, some calling for everything to be free and some others telling everyone just how lucky we all are that they only want to charge us JUST $30 for a mount.
Love the game, love the folks at Cryptic and I look forward to continuing to support them in the coming years as I have in the past. Just don't feel the current shop items have very good value, and thats just the Zen shop - saying nothing about the insane Astral Diamond price points.
If someone with MY history of throwing money at them feels this way...
Having 1-3 is a NEED, not a want.
I'm not complaining about the NEED to buy bags, just the price. I realize they need to make money, but 10$ per bag PER character, is beyond absurd. This is a game where you hit 60 within a day, and reroll an alt, or spend money to get endgame gear, because you can't get endgame gear enchanted without SPENDING money, or playing 2-3 years straight farming every day.
I don't care that endgame is 100% pay to win, I just want to play the game without restrictions, the bags are a MAJOR restriction.
Then all PWE has to do, is listen to its community, and provide a steady, uninterrupted, cyclical release of Zen Store content on a weekly or bi-weekly rotation. Offering cool items from exclusive race skins, tatoos, hairstyles, clothing, weapon, and armor skins, ect... Price them reasonably, $20-$25 being the cost of the most high end and exclusive items ( like special items that will only be available during a holiday and such, and of course the epic quality items), $10-$15 for the mid grade items, and a flat rate of $5 dollars for additional usability and functionality like bag and bank space. I would also suggest completely getting rid of AD, and just allowing players to buy things like additional bag space, bank space, and the like for large, but a reasonable amount of gold. Respecs should never cost a player Zen. I'd also suggest making the large purchases, epic mounts and the like, as account bound, and the mid grade and lower purchases character bound.
In summary. Establish a clear, open, and two way line of communication with your customers>Provide a steady stream of reasonably priced Zen content that is directly driven by the player base>profit for years to come as the largest F2P MMO on the planet.
I totally agree with this guy.....I would have done spent 20 dollars and probably another 50 out of my next pay check if things were cut in half......The prices are so ridiculous that I wont spend a dime......
Play: PILLAGER* of the DEAD! By: Hempy NW-DNV3R9B4J
~HEMPY'S CRIT-GEN GUARDIAN FIGHTER BUILD~
I spent $100 while game was in closed beta. Have now been in the game only a week, and have almost Zero Zen left. I agree. They got my $100--they won't get one nickel more!
So either it should be more in line with 3.5E SRD, which a Greater Bag of Holding (Type 4) can hold equivalent to roughly 9 Adventurer's Backpacks, or just a static 60 inventory spaces.
So far I have not needed another bag.
I don't understand why people are complaining about cash shop prices for a game that is completely FREE. NO gated content what so ever.
Cash shop prices are fine. Sheesh!
In reality, "fair" is the point where if you raised the price one cent, you'd lose money because you sold less, and if you lowered it one cent, you'd lose money without making it up in increased sales.
Cutting your prices in half only makes sense if it more than doubles your sales. PWE has 12 active games currently; they have vast reams of data on where to price these items based on their ingame utility. If you don't like the prices, you don't have to buy the items; there is nothing in the store that you can't do without.
You might be satisfied. Does not mean everyone else is.
EVERY PWE game has ridiculously high cash prices for their respective cash shops. To have the counterpoint data, they would have had to, at some point, have data to compare with. Honestly, I don't understand where they have come up with the prices they do - they are by far higher than any other cash shop based MMO that I can think of.
Unless they have at some point sold MMO cash shop objects for consistently less than their current model, they do not have "the data". Maybe they ran some sort of research project whereby users were polled for prices they would be willing to pay, but I have certainly never been involved in such a thing, nor have I ever read anything similar (which you would expect to see given the consistency with which people complain about PWE pricing models).
Feedback on forums is really the only relevant feedback that they get about their pricing models and the reasons why they do or don't sell well. Whether an item sells well or not can be for a number of reasons, most broadly because it is not good value for money (either too expensive, or not useful/attractive enough/doesn't fulfill a need). Just not buying something is not good feedback, unless PWE knows WHY you didn't buy it. So, stop telling people not to come to the forums and complain about why they dislike the current pricing models; those sorts of people are doing more for the longevity of the game than those people who don't buy something and say nothing at all.
First, the shop should state clearly whether something is account or character specific. Second, I would love to see an option to buy a bag of holding account wide. I'd pay $10 right now if I knew it would carry across characters. I'd actually pay a bit more. I like to make alts and $10 for bag convenience for a single character feels too steep at the moment.
On that note, $5 for two more character slots is completely reasonable and I'll be getting one (or more) of those eventually. This game gives a lot for free and it's reasonable to spend some $ on the experience. But I want to spend Zen on upgrading my Neverwinter account as a whole, not a single character.
That said, this and Star Trek are the only two FTP mmos that make me hesitant to spend money...because the prices feel like a rip off. Mind you I still do...shame on me...but I at least feel guilty about it, and have most likely spent all I will spend on this game now that I have the basics(no doubt ST will keep at me with new ship releases, the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>) ...the other frills are just too expensive...10$ for a random mix of profession <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, most of which won't even be useful? Been there, done that...
You're comparing against an F2P model that charged access to the Flashpoints (dungeons), charged for you to roll on loot in the Flashpoints and then charged you too equip said loot unless you paid the subscription fee.
I'd much rather be unable to roll for loot because I don't have the bag space to pick it up than because I didn't pay for the right to roll on said loot.
And PWE does have the data for this, they've been running F2P games longer than most US companies that run F2P games, they have 2 markets and 5 years of experience in the youngest of those markets. They run regular sales on their games and have people who's job it is to analysis the data from all sales in the cash stores across all their games, and those people probably made more accurate predictions about sales of items from the Neverwinter C-Store than any of you.
As far as I know we're the customers. They TRY to analyze what we will think is good. This is not good.
Because then they would have to spend some money on the game. Can't have that!
Which is all very nice and good if you assume that their analysis is done for our benefit, the reality is that it's all a big game called "How much can we get away with charging?" (Protip - PWE is winning)
Agreed on all points.
Lottie