How do you feel about costumes?

AardvarkPepper

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/4/forum-rules-please-read-before-posting#latest

Nudity, and discussion of nudity, is not vulgar at all in some cultures.  Yet I generally consider people living in such cultures to be mature and considerate enough to extend their consideration to those that don't share that particular cultural norm that might be made uncomfortable by such discussion.

Considering the material Marvel has come out with over the years under different artists and editors, I don't think it impossible that MPQ might put out less-revealing costumes as a reskin option on some characters.

ammenell

i don't care about them, always saw skins and costumes as quick money grab.

in terms of prizes, nothing compares to mpq. paying 80 Euro for 5 LTs is... yeah.

Chrono_Tata

I'd buy them if they are sold individually for say <$5. With the way they are now coming ties with much more expensive packs I'm just not interested, since I already resolved not to spend more than the minimum amount a month on MPQ.

broll

AardvarkPepper said:

Straycat said:

@broll @AardvarkPepper

I don't know how their finances work, but I don't think they priced costumes on cost and markup.

It wasn't my intent to imply they did.  Contextually, I hypothesized costume costs to establish a base cost that needed to be recouped, and stated DOTA and Fortnite playerbases are different to MPQ's database so different monetization schemes might be considered "reasonable."  Price point was established to maximize profits; I think we'd agree?

Straycat said:

I don't think they itemize costs like that either.

Believe me, they do.

Oh, I know.  It's a really silly assumption to believe people or groups act "intelligently"; in the real world things really don't work that way much of the time.

But consider.  Even if there isn't a bean-counter in head office totting up columns, say you're a motivated employee that wants a salary increase.  Does it sound better to say "Hey boss, I want more money?"  Or does it sound better to say "Since my last review, I brought X additional revenue to the company?"  Sure, that employee might not get a raise even with the latter, but if they go in for a few performance reviews and there's always something like that going on, well - let's just say they've got some leverage at that point, not because of however much money they *already* made, but for the concept that they're a value-added employee that will generate more profit for the company than they will cost even in spite of a raise.

Then too, there are feasibility studies undertaken before anything gets implemented.  It might not be a twenty page report, maybe it's just someone that hears a proposal then says "yes" or "no".  But in the end, it's a question of costs and potential profits, and if the cost to potential profits don't look good, then the feature won't be implemented in the first place.

One way or another, someone's counting those beans, and if on the off chance there isn't someone counting those beans now, there probably will be, just a matter of time - whether boss or employee, someone will, just because it's in their interests to do so.

Ultimately regardless of how much the cost of making a single costume is (Let's say sparkly Thor for this example) it costs them to the same regardless if they only sell 1 or the sell 1 billion (yes I'm intentionally using absurd numbers here to prove a point).  So regardless of how much it costs them it's in there best interest to find the price that returns the most revenue.  Is that a very high price that few will take, a relatively low price that many will buy without thinking leading to many more units sold, or a mid-range price that balances the two.  In all honesty I don't know, but my suspicion is (based on what I've heard about mobile game spending and my own experiences with it) that the the current price point cannot be optimal as it's far too high.

What I suspect they are trying to do is make them appear/feel rarer to try and drive sales.  They clearly tried this with supports and based on their reversal of that strategy i would say it didn't work out.  I believe there are aspects of the game where this works (for example the $20-$40 SCL bundles, the $100 HP deals, etc).  The reason those work is because they are essentially pay to win.  People are willing to drop a lot more money when it leads to a better chance at winning the game.  Supports don't have that direct of an affect on winning and costumes have 0 affect on winning, so I don't feel that trying to make them feel rare by artificially high prices is going to work in D3s favor.  Then again that's just an educated guess, I don't see there stats to confirm or deny this, but I'm hoping some is doing this analysis and if there not Brigby reads it and suggests they do. 

bluewolf

@broll 's post made me think of something else.

In a game/economy such as this, it is very hard to increase prices on anything.  Making things more accessible is always viewed positively (even if it is accompanied with feelings of "it's about time").

So even if the ultimate prices on costumes end up lower, it makes a certain amount of sense to start high to give themselves room to make them lower.

I'm sure they are keeping an eye on things, but I wonder how they evaluate things like two offers (Thor and Goblin) with different contents, same price, but a costume that many people will see and use vs one that most players will access once every 7 months or so?  How would you even try to judge what people thought of those two things?  They really should change less variables to evaluate things more effectively.

DAZ0273

If you are going to analyse "value" then you can go one step further. Costumes are 100% aesethic items with no intrinsic value whatsoever unless you happen to have the character. It makes no sense whatsoever therefore to give them "rarity" values. 5* Thor's costume has the same "rarity" as Kamala Khan's - either you have the character to equip it to or you don't.

I don't know whether MPQ is just stuck in the concept of there being tiers of value for everything but these costumes have 2 levels of value possible: value is either zero (don't have Green Goblin, can't use Red Goblin costume) or 100% (Have Green Goblin, can use Red Goblin costume).

broll

bluewolf said:

@broll 's post made me think of something else.

In a game/economy such as this, it is very hard to increase prices on anything.  Making things more accessible is always viewed positively (even if it is accompanied with feelings of "it's about time").

So even if the ultimate prices on costumes end up lower, it makes a certain amount of sense to start high to give themselves room to make them lower.

I'm sure they are keeping an eye on things, but I wonder how they evaluate things like two offers (Thor and Goblin) with different contents, same price, but a costume that many people will see and use vs one that most players will access once every 7 months or so?  How would you even try to judge what people thought of those two things?  They really should change less variables to evaluate things more effectively.

That's a good point.  I kind of expected more A/B type testing like when H4H first came out, but starting high and gradually lowering could generate some good will.  It could also have the opposite effect where you give a bad first impression that continues to even after improvements, which is where I currently am with supports.  I don't care how good they make them they just make me angry every time I think about them.  I really don't want this system to end up the same.

ThaRoadWarrior

It's interesting that both of these offers have come with a chunk of legendary draws of various flavors- I wonder if this is less about what you'd pay for a costume and totally about trying to assign a value to legendary currency like CP or Tokens.

Straycat

My pet theory is that they wanted costumes to be a prestige item and they wanted some bundle at the $75 price point, since the regular store goes from 2, 5, 20, 50 to 100. Then they included the LTs to justify the costs a little. 

Brigby

*Removed inappropriate comments. Please keep all comments respectful and appropriate for the forum. Thank you!

SaltyK

Voted "I rather they not be in MPQ"

zippee

I see games that offer skins for in game currency or real money. Usually the asking price is anywhere from one dollar to max of  ten. But never what this game charges.

hopper1979

If they did something other than change the look they might be worth it but since it has effect on the game who cares.  Also there is no way in hell I would shell out 75 buck for something that has no effect on the game (I know some other goodies come with it but seriously 75 dollars).  I might buy a skin for 5 bucks but again with no in game effect what is the point?

Dragon_Nexus

hopper1979 said:

If they did something other than change the look they might be worth it but since it has effect on the game who cares.  Also there is no way in hell I would shell out 75 buck for something that has no effect on the game (I know some other goodies come with it but seriously 75 dollars).  I might buy a skin for 5 bucks but again with no in game effect what is the point?

I think altering a characters stats would be the last thing we'd want.

Getting a new skin only to find those with it hit harder, faster or for less AP or have more health or whatever would really push this game into F2P territory.

Can you imagine if that 5* Thor skin improved the character in some way? Can you imagine the riot that would hit these boards as those people too poor to slap down, what was it, £75? on a .png file for your mobile phone game were now forever at a disadvantage from those who bought it?