Comic Sell Price Change Reasoning/Discussion

IceIX

kaganb wrote:

Slightly off topic, but playing devils advocate here. Since you say that 25 HP is much more valuable than 100 ISO in terms of time/effort (according to the calculated percentages earlier in the thread it is actually ~30x more valuable), would it not make sense to increase the amount of ISO you get from the marketplace by 30x? So for $2, you get 24000 ISO instead of 800? That ISO amount seems a bit high imo, but that is pretty much what you are saying.

If I make $20/hour, that hour of time/effort is worth 2900 HP or 8800 ISO. Doesn't seem like buying ISO is really worth it at all.

Iso and HP purchases are intended to be somewhat expensive quick boosts in power, not a way to "pay to not play". If HP/Iso purchases enabled you to essentially skip playing the game for relatively small expenditures it would mean that playing the game would be less preferred than simply buying the power for a number of users. At the same time, both purchases need to be interesting enough for people to believe in their worth. It's a fairly tricky balancing situation.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Iso and HP purchases are intended to be somewhat expensive quick boosts in power, not a way to "pay to not play". If HP/Iso purchases enabled you to essentially skip playing the game for relatively small expenditures it would mean that playing the game would be less preferred than simply buying the power for a number of users. At the same time, both purchases need to be interesting enough for people to believe in their worth. It's a fairly tricky balancing situation.

Nod, that makes sense, but that is still a pretty large disparity. I don't know if you can reveal this information, but the time period where you doubled the amount of ISO received in the marketplace, what was the percentage increase in people purchasing ISO?

Thank you for the conversation regardless. I promise I'm not trying to be a pain in the ****.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

No, its not even, and the iso is a raw deal. That said...do you really want iso, the xp, to be easily bought? Lvl 141 all day? I sure don't. So keep the iso a bad deal plz lol.

Nah, I agree with you, that's why I said playing devils advocate. Just trying to understand their thinking of value between ISO and HP... it isn't consistent which triggers my interest as to why.

IceIX

kaganb wrote:

Nod, that makes sense, but that is still a pretty large disparity. I don't know if you can reveal this information, but the time period where you doubled the amount of ISO received in the marketplace, what was the percentage increase in people purchasing ISO?

Thank you for the conversation regardless. I promise I'm not trying to be a pain in the ****.

No problem.
Well, with any sale we see a pretty big spike in purchases. People like getting stuff for cheaper/getting free stuff after all. I can't give numbers, but I'll say that purchases increased "X-fold" for that time and depressed a bit afterwards. We anticipate that and take a look at how the economy cools down afterwards. It also gives us a much better bearing on how things *would* run if more Iso-8/HP were injected into the economy. This recent change with comic sell prices is an example of that style of modeling working itself into the game slowly.

In a more general non-game centric bit: The interesting thing is though that games/services that do more sales, or sales more often, actually start seeing their monetization go down overall as people A) Are trained to wait for sales and Expect that sale prices are normal prices since they are that way so often. It's why you see games like Clash of Clans rarely run sales (but run targeted sales at specific users, which we don't do). It's also why you see places like Steam do holiday sales. They're expected, so people wait for them but they're rare enough that many people won't want to wait around for the next 3 months in the hopes that their particular wished for product will hit the sale.

Unknown

I remember SoE's station cash was on double/triple sale so often that nobody ever bought it at the normal price, and they ended up selling too much that they eventually just stopped honoring them because it'd have led to too much lost of revenue if people were actually able to spend all the currency they bought.

Unknown

I just got a 3* blue Doom cover from a standard token. So it's still possible. And yes... I needed Blue Doom.

PuceMoose

Happy about the changes overall, especially the 125 -> 250 boost for ** characters. I am not high enough level to contemplate selling any *** star covers (except purple spiderman), so the loss of HP doesn't bother me. On the topic of ISO price, the only time I felt the value for money was fair was during the last lone star tournament; 500 HP for 6000 ISO (assuming you sell all of the 1 star covers) felt like a pretty reasonable price point.

Unknown

The thing is if they made the cost for Iso8 'reasonable' then it'd be P2W because if it's reasonable (and not trivial) to a player to buy them, he'd buy it and have level 141 characters and then that'd be a rather significant advantage.

The iso8/boosts/health pack purchases are really more of a 'buy in case of emergency', because if you can afford to buy them normally, then they'd become mandatory and P2W.

Unknown

I like the changeset. Actually all elements of it, and even more the detailed explanation. Some fresh air.


On a different tack, I still don't like nerfing lots of tournament rewards. Especially the mentioned 2nd progression HP in PVP that is placed too high and the amount halved. Though I think if that 50HP was just placed down to 800 it would be a great positive change. Especially the 450HP price of the last cover slots (considering to have 1 of each character) is way too steep with the regular gain rate. And especially the "insane" rate of pushing out new characters. Paint barely dried on Psylocke (who came on heals of DD) and we getting Panther? sure it's fun to have characters but it is NOT FUN to be forced to sell off someone on the roster. Even someone not used like Bagman. (Certainly it could be mitigated by the suggested roster slot tokens that could be won on special occasions.)

Unknown

Hm, so that's long awaited Bagman' buff? Now he seems so much better than Yelena - 250 vs 100 iso is no brainer.

turul

Boy it will be tough for newbs to buy cover slots, if they dont realize they should not spend their HP on now net negative shielding

Nemek

turul wrote:

Boy it will be tough for newbs to buy cover slots, if they dont realize they should not spend their HP on now net negative shielding

I don't understand - can you elaborate?

Wouldn't newbs be getting more HP in this new system? You need to be in the top 10% of players to get a 3* cover in PvP, which newbs are unlikely to be in. You need to have that 3* character maxed before you'd generally even start selling the character, which newbs are in an unlikely position to be in. However, standard recruit tokens are plentiful in both the prologue and any PvE event and super easy to get in a lightning round.

So, I'm curious to see what I'm missing that brought you to the conclusion that it is now more difficult for new players to acquire HP.

Unknown

Wish this change had been announced a few days before going life. Overall impact feels okay for me, I'm not yet in ***-cover selling range, so I'll gain more ISO from **-covers I don't need without losing out on HP.

On second thought, getting those 25 HP out of standard tokens feels somewhat weird. Buying such a token I'd really always expect to receive a cover. Just as an idea, would it be possible to create a "utility" token that contains a random pick of (old standard token, ISO, HP, rainbow boost), with the token having a very high probability? And return the standard tokens to their former functionality? Low tier Pvp/PvE rewards would have to be changed to those utility tokens. I think this would fit in better, it doesn't dilute the cover tokens and makes the low tier rewards even more useful for new players.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

It's long overdue.

It was becoming a bit annoying at all the max-leveled users who were getting (villain) lightning round rewards simply to cash in the covers for HP. Although a small few were actually building second characters.

Yeah, right, let's pander to max-levels more! They're clearly the best and only audience of the game!

Unknown

rowaasr13 wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It's long overdue.

It was becoming a bit annoying at all the max-leveled users who were getting (villain) lightning round rewards simply to cash in the covers for HP. Although a small few were actually building second characters.

Yeah, right, let's pander to max-levels more! They're clearly the best and only audience of the game!

Very happy with the change. Didn't see that this was coming, but it was a nice surprise after I went to sell my covers last night.

Unknown

rowaasr13 wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It's long overdue.

It was becoming a bit annoying at all the max-leveled users who were getting (villain) lightning round rewards simply to cash in the covers for HP. Although a small few were actually building second characters.

Yeah, right, let's pander to max-levels more! They're clearly the best and only audience of the game!

I think you missed the point. The change is to make it less appealing for max level characters to get covers they don't need. This change is pandering, if you must put it that way, to low and mid level players. Mid level players will have less competition for covers in LR, and everyone who plays the game gets recruit tokens constantly. The HP from tokens will balance out with lost HP from covers for high level players. For new and mid level, this is a straight up HP increase.

Unknown

Hmm... I'm a little doubtful of the pros of this change. I'm seeing this as a significant decrease in hp generated by the system as a less than ideal attempt to fix a problem.

The way I see it is this: The main issue is with the fear of having a subset of players monopolising top ranks of events to gain hp, depriving other players of covers and eventually turning events into a "rich getting richer" scenario. While I see the point and like the idea that the devs are trying to nip this problem in the bud, I don't particularly agree with this solution.

I need to point out the 3rd point of the supposed pros of this change (i.e. everyone has a chance to gain hp) pretty much does not apply. This was already true even before this change. Players no matter which point of the game they are were already given the chance to gain 3* and 4* covers from standard tokens, which they could then convert to hero points by selling them. Everyone has been able to gain hp in this way.

"But newer players who get 3* and 4* covers would likely keep them and not sell them, thereby not getting the hero points," it could be argued. This line of argument would be correct if players got the hp in addition to obtaining a 3* or 4* cover but this is not the case:

Selling model
If you use a token, got a 3* or 4* and sold it off, the nett result is you having hp + iso but no cover.
If you kept the cover, you get the cover but no hp or iso.

New model
If you use a token and get the hp, you get hp but no cover or iso.
If you got a cover, you get the cover but no hp.
If you got a cover and sell it off, you get iso but no cover or hp.

The nett result per token use is similar, you either get a cover and no hp/iso or a hp/iso but no cover. However, what changed is the amount of iso and hp you can get and the chances of getting them.

The amount of iso you could get is obviously increased. However, this is at a cost of the chances to obtain a 3*, 4* and hp. Previously, you could get hp from obtaining both 3* and 4* covers, so the chances of you getting hp from a token is definitely higher than just the chances of pulling a 3*, which is what the current hp obtaining chance is compared to. Since the hp obtained from selling a 4* was higher, the average amount of hp you could have gotten from tokens is definitely much higher than the 25hp being given out now. Then, since it's specifically mentioned that this new chance to get hp from tokens were drawn from all the other chances, it would mean that the chances of you obtaining a 3* or 4* per token has been reduced, even if it's just by the tiniest sliver.

The worst is that this change might not (IMO is unlikely) to change the problem of players with 13/13 cover (and max level) of a certain character joining events and taking away precious reward covers from those that do not have full covers. Players are still going to join for the iso the reward covers provide as that is more likely to be what they are lacking instead of hero points. The lack of hp from selling is likely only going to change those players' shielding strategy as they can no longer be as aggressive with shielding as before if they do not wish to suffer a nett loss of hp.

Unknown

I think this a good change. I am excited for it. It adds a clearer value system.

Unknown

I like it. I got the 25 hp off a token earlier today and it was a nice surprise, since standard tokens have rarely been giving me something useful lately.

One thing - and people have talked about this - has there been any consideration of allowing us to trade in multiple standard tokens for a heroic token?

Unknown

The interesting thing is that rarity ratio is at 1:6. While the sell price ratio is 1:2. What is quite apart, shouldn't it be closer really?

Sure the recent change is huge improvement as it was even worse this far, so you got better off with 3 standards than 1 heroic. By far. After change it's almost level.

I'd have used at least an 1:3 ratio in sell prices. Consider 100/300/1000/3000 ?

With my estimated rate of cover sell it would be just a few percent increase on the total flow, but feel much better.