Heroes for Hire - Price Update (5/19/17)

deadtaco

Brigby said:

and after seeing all of the results, it was clear that players preferred the offer that had more items in it.

I call **** @Brigby - how was it clear?

I only had the option of 3600 and I bought a couple so that I could finally champ a 4*.  I did not prefer it at all and would much rather have had the 2500 option.  I was stuck with only one option, there was no choice.

Offer both options and see what becomes 'clear'.

broll

BoyWonder1914 said:

I really wonder sometimes about the business acumen of the people that run this operation. Pricing is a situation that any business that offers any kind of product deals with, so this is no way unique to you guys. Every business faces the dilemma of making more money by:

1) Charging more money, and thus making more by the same people paying more, OR
2) Charging less money, and thus making more money by attracting more customers/more purchases from the same customers

I don't honestly see why option 2 isn't the obvious choice here. The people that are willing to pay 3600, do you honestly think you'll lose a single one of them by charging LESS! Hell no, if anything they'll buy more, and probably more often. You are however, practically guaranteed to lose the people that paid 2500, because they are not willing to pay 3600. This is a free-to-play game, so they don't make any money simply by a new person joining the fray. They make money by people SPENDING. What entices people to spend? Prices that are reasonable, and provide good value. To a whale, I highly doubt 1100 HP is decision-changing. To just about anyone else, bang for buck matters a great deal. Please take this one back to the drawing board Finance guys. 

The real trick is here is that HP isn't a real currency.  I have every confidence they went with the higher price because if someone's going to spend that much HP it once it's more than likely they are going to make some purchase to do so.  2500 is relatively easy to save up and spend without saving a dime.  This is why I think their real metric for which is better is when someone bough from either store, was it preceded by a real cash purchase.  From a business side it's probably the better decision, I'm more mad that they are trying to tell is it's because it's more popular, this is a marketing scam and dishonest.

spatenfloot

They determined that people will still buy at the higher price if there is no alternative so they went with the expensive option.

JHawkInc

Bought at 2500. Won't at 3600. For several reasons. The biggest being that 10-packs at 3800 are more desirable (especially with newly released characters). The second being that what we want is the 4*, and not the extra baggage, and it's lame that the Heroes for Hire pack comes with more baggage than desirable product.

Shame the forums are already in full-on angry finger-pointing mode and the odds of calm discussion are dropping by the minute.

Qubort

broll said:

nick_chicane said:

Really?????????? I await the responses from the forum. 

I cant believe for a second the 3600 offer was the most popular, D3 have just chosen the most expensive that will make them the most money. 

It's not a popularity contest, it's a profitability contest.  I do like that they are throwing a bone to people who bought (hopefully it's 300 per purchase, but I doubt it).

Certainly not shocked they went with the bad price.  Guess I can forget this store exists.

I would have bought many for 2500HP. But I only got the 3600 offer so now I miss out on the hp too. Complete **** that others got 4 star characters for 1100 less for a month.

I agree with others I'd like to hide the offer because everytime I scroll past it I get pissed off.

Azoth658

I normally try to look objectively at stuff when I can but this is absolutely kitty.

I loved the 2500 offer, I bought two. Why didn't I buy more? Because until today the covers were useless as I had all 5 of the top cover for most characters. I'm desperate to cover Medusa but I was five on her yellow so no buy. She's just come round again and I was saving this week to buy her red and now boom price increase.

Would I have bought the two if it had been 3600, absolutely not. Will I now that it is my only option. Nope.

I also think random testing is nonsense why couldn't the entire player base be given the option and see whether people were buying for the extra resources or because they wanted the cover.

I really think this needs to be rerun with both options available and the option to select the cover you want for the character rather than random assignment of colour.

Landale

spatenfloot said:

They determined that people will still buy at the higher price if there is no alternative so they went with the expensive option.

Which is precisely why I wasn't surprised they went with the 3600 price point.  

I'm perfectly willing to believe that more people bought the 3600.  However, under no circumstances does that indicate what people "preferred."  The very notion of "preference" implies one has a choice.  Since I doubt they took into consideration people who didn't buy at 3600, and since they didn't offer both price points to all players, then they weren't really taking into account people's choices.  

jordanix

Kjeldbjerg said:

Had the 2500 hp option. Bought once, and have hp saved up for another buy for one of my 5/2/5 characters. 
Not a chance that I will be doing that at 3600 hp.

This is me exactly. I bought 2-3 and had enough saved to buy 2 more at the old price.
I now see why they raised the amount of HP in DDQ and story mode progression, just to claw it back with this rip off. Very disappointed.

DyingLegend

I'm not shocked they went for the higher price point. Too rich for my blood, Id rather buy 4 roster slots as that has more value than one 4 star cover and elite tokens that 95% of the time open up as two stars. 

Rick_OShay

Are you guys forgetting they added 10 HP to the DDQ? Now I can buy one of these HfH deals each and every 360 days now!

Qubort

scottee said:

Not sure why everyone's up in arms. There's already a comment from an alliance saying the 3600 bundle was more worth it.

Most of the sales on these will be from those in buyers' clubs, who have lots of spare HP. That'll account for far more sales than people who save up and only purchase the package every once in a while. The whales are adding up all the contents, and if they deem the 3600 package more worth, what's that to you?

Which alliance? Pretty confident I can find other alliances to disagree. Wales included.

herm1978

I'm baffled that they think they conducted any kind of an experiment that would give them the data to conclude that people prefered the 3600 priced option. Hint: offer both if you want to know what people prefer (not like I'm the first one to point that out, I know)

I actually bought 2 of the 2500 hfh since I got the 13th cover of two good 4*s. But I'm not even going to look at the offerings at 3600.

And to think that I, as a steam user, was actually thinking of paying for the VIP again now that we get the intercepts...

broll

Rick OShay said:

Are you guys forgetting they added 10 HP to the DDQ? Now I can buy one of these HfH deals each and every 360 days now!

This about made me pee myself.

Landale

broll said:

Rick OShay said:

Are you guys forgetting they added 10 HP to the DDQ? Now I can buy one of these HfH deals each and every 360 days now!

This about made me pee myself.

  

Jaedenkaal

@Brigby

I'm really disappointed that this price level testing didn't continue for a full cycle of all 4* covers and colors. I'd have been perfectly happy to buy a bunch of covers this way, it just so happens that the majority of my 4*s already have 5 covers in their first power, which is all we've seen so far.

Starfury

JHawkInc said:

Bought at 2500. Won't at 3600. For several reasons. The biggest being that 10-packs at 3800 are more desirable (especially with newly released characters). The second being that what we want is the 4*, and not the extra baggage, and it's lame that the Heroes for Hire pack comes with more baggage than desirable product.

Shame the forums are already in full-on angry finger-pointing mode and the odds of calm discussion are dropping by the minute.

One the one hand, you're absolutely right. In my case, the first reaction was an eyeroll and a snarky post or two.

On the other hand, there has already been plenty of discussion about the two price points, and if the devs had been interested in it, they could've taken their conclusions from that.

If they had been interested, they might have even opened hailing frequencies and invited said calm discussion. As it is, we didn't even get an official confirmation that they're A/B testing.

I'm still quite convinced the difference in atmosphere in different gaming forums isn't primarily caused by the players being different people. Some forums are a places of communication between developers and their community, others are full of people feeling ignored and venting.

VizMantis

I admit, rather than boycotting the higher price point, I bought 2 HfH covers for a couple long-suffering, vaulted characters for 3600 hp a pop.  Would I have preferred the lower price offer given the option?  Most definitely!  Equating the fact that I bought the only option to preferring that deal seems like bad logic.

Wonko33

I hate when companies say stuff like that - just say we decided to go with the 3600hp option, no need to try and make us believe it was out favorite choice.

GurlBYE

broll said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

I really wonder sometimes about the business acumen of the people that run this operation. Pricing is a situation that any business that offers any kind of product deals with, so this is no way unique to you guys. Every business faces the dilemma of making more money by:

1) Charging more money, and thus making more by the same people paying more, OR
2) Charging less money, and thus making more money by attracting more customers/more purchases from the same customers

I don't honestly see why option 2 isn't the obvious choice here. The people that are willing to pay 3600, do you honestly think you'll lose a single one of them by charging LESS! Hell no, if anything they'll buy more, and probably more often. You are however, practically guaranteed to lose the people that paid 2500, because they are not willing to pay 3600. This is a free-to-play game, so they don't make any money simply by a new person joining the fray. They make money by people SPENDING. What entices people to spend? Prices that are reasonable, and provide good value. To a whale, I highly doubt 1100 HP is decision-changing. To just about anyone else, bang for buck matters a great deal. Please take this one back to the drawing board Finance guys. 

The real trick is here is that HP isn't a real currency.  I have every confidence they went with the higher price because if someone's going to spend that much HP it once it's more than likely they are going to make some purchase to do so.  2500 is relatively easy to save up and spend without saving a dime.  This is why I think their real metric for which is better is when someone bough from either store, was it preceded by a real cash purchase.  From a business side it's probably the better decision, I'm more mad that they are trying to tell is it's because it's more popular, this is a marketing scam and dishonest.

  
He gets it. 

broll

Starfury said:

I'm still quite convinced the difference in atmosphere in different gaming forums isn't primarily caused by the players being different people. Some forums are a places of communication between developers and their community, others are full of people feeling ignored and venting.

This may be the truest thing I've ever read here, possibly on the entire internet.