How much would you have to pay to cover a 5*?

BlixTheFrog

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

CT1888

BlixTheFrog said:

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

20 people get in an alliance, everyone buys a stark salary (or several) so for ever stark salary you buy, you are getting 140cp.

BlixTheFrog

CT1888 said:

BlixTheFrog said:

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

20 people get in an alliance, everyone buys a stark salary (or several) so for ever stark salary you buy, you are getting 140cp.

Oh, wow. A Stark salary must be what I've spent on the game in the 11 months I've been playing !

bluewolf

jp1 said:

atomzed said:

jp1 said:

Absolutely ridiculous that it is against TOS to sell your account/resources. If there were some real monetary value to the purchases people would spend much more IMO. See some MMOs where the economy is that of a small country.

Jp1, it’s actually standard practice across most, if not all games to disallow transferring or selling of accounts and resources. Look at all the EULA and it’s practically guaranteed that it’s the case. 

Simply because second hand sales don’t contribute to the bottom line. 

They don’t contribute directly. Indirectly, people may spend more and others that don’t spend because it is a “waste” might be willing to invest in something that they could recoup some part of later. Also, a new player that wants a well developed roster and is willing to spend money for it is the type of player that is now likely to make future purchases.

I agree though, many companies don’t think big picture. 

I kind of doubt that the rate of return on a sold roster would be enough to incentivize spending more on your account with an eye towards eventually making more money.  Hence the devs allowing selling off rosters would be a losing proposition.

I suppose it would follow a similar curve to used games, where you can get a lot of store credit from Gamestop if you sell back a 2 week old game but a dollar or less once it's a year or so old.  As an ongoing mobile roster-building game chugs along, you inevitably would have (in an environment allowing rosters to be sold) a market glut of retired rosters, and the amount you could charge for your roster would fall proportionately to how many people are trying to also sell their rosters.  So if you whaled for 3 months and sold it off, you could ask for a decent amount of money.  Play for 5 years and decide to quit?  There are thousands of other players who also have quit and will be trying to sell their rosters, driving the price into the ground.

If you could sell your roster (people try to and some "retirees" sometimes appear to have sold or given away their account as it starts playing in different ways and slices), the devs would have a much harder time making money off the new player with a souped-up roster than a noob starting out.  The game devs set up early bundles and would almost certainly make a lot more money selling those to new accounts vs a new someone who has a veteran roster who would probably question the ROI on lots of bundles, just like most vets do.

BlixTheFrog said:

CT1888 said:

BlixTheFrog said:

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

20 people get in an alliance, everyone buys a stark salary (or several) so for ever stark salary you buy, you are getting 140cp.

Oh, wow. A Stark salary must be what I've spent on the game in the 11 months I've been playing !

In case it wasn't clear, there are temporary alliances.  The contradictory aspect is that you are likely collaborating (on your roster building acceleration) with people who ultimately will competing with you, or at least your alliance, for placement rewards.  Some alliances don't allow their players to go to these buy clubs and run theirs inside the alliance family only.

jp1

bluewolf said:

jp1 said:

atomzed said:

jp1 said:

Absolutely ridiculous that it is against TOS to sell your account/resources. If there were some real monetary value to the purchases people would spend much more IMO. See some MMOs where the economy is that of a small country.

Jp1, it’s actually standard practice across most, if not all games to disallow transferring or selling of accounts and resources. Look at all the EULA and it’s practically guaranteed that it’s the case. 

Simply because second hand sales don’t contribute to the bottom line. 

They don’t contribute directly. Indirectly, people may spend more and others that don’t spend because it is a “waste” might be willing to invest in something that they could recoup some part of later. Also, a new player that wants a well developed roster and is willing to spend money for it is the type of player that is now likely to make future purchases.

I agree though, many companies don’t think big picture. 

I kind of doubt that the rate of return on a sold roster would be enough to incentivize spending more on your account with an eye towards eventually making more money.  Hence the devs allowing selling off rosters would be a losing proposition.

I suppose it would follow a similar curve to used games, where you can get a lot of store credit from Gamestop if you sell back a 2 week old game but a dollar or less once it's a year or so old.  As an ongoing mobile roster-building game chugs along, you inevitably would have (in an environment allowing rosters to be sold) a market glut of retired rosters, and the amount you could charge for your roster would fall proportionately to how many people are trying to also sell their rosters.  So if you whaled for 3 months and sold it off, you could ask for a decent amount of money.  Play for 5 years and decide to quit?  There are thousands of other players who also have quit and will be trying to sell their rosters, driving the price into the ground.

If you could sell your roster (people try to and some "retirees" sometimes appear to have sold or given away their account as it starts playing in different ways and slices), the devs would have a much harder time making money off the new player with a souped-up roster than a noob starting out.  The game devs set up early bundles and would almost certainly make a lot more money selling those to new accounts vs a new someone who has a veteran roster who would probably question the ROI on lots of bundles, just like most vets do.

BlixTheFrog said:

CT1888 said:

BlixTheFrog said:

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

20 people get in an alliance, everyone buys a stark salary (or several) so for ever stark salary you buy, you are getting 140cp.

Oh, wow. A Stark salary must be what I've spent on the game in the 11 months I've been playing !

In case it wasn't clear, there are temporary alliances.  The contradictory aspect is that you are likely collaborating (on your roster building acceleration) with people who ultimately will competing with you, or at least your alliance, for placement rewards.  Some alliances don't allow their players to go to these buy clubs and run theirs inside the alliance family only.

Yeah, I understand what you mean. Although there are examples to the contrary. Also, if D3 themselves acted as a broker and took a cut from the transaction all these (overvalued) assets would still be worth something to them as well. Not to mention they could control the pricing just as they do now. 

Used games weren’t detrimental to the companies who made the game. It was just a ripoff for the folks who traded them in. Still, greed and misunderstanding of the market has them looking to kill that avenue as well. 

I’m sure you are aware that games exist which still fetch a premium used, other online games have assets that sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars between players (and thrive), etc.

Even the reach of the ever increasing pressure to constantly grow capitalism has an end, people just don’t like to think about it.  You can’t have endless returns without something renewable. They won’t do it, that I agree with...I believe it could be done with a little creativity and forward thinking.

atomzed

jp1 said:

bluewolf said:

jp1 said:

atomzed said:

jp1 said:

Absolutely ridiculous that it is against TOS to sell your account/resources. If there were some real monetary value to the purchases people would spend much more IMO. See some MMOs where the economy is that of a small country.

Jp1, it’s actually standard practice across most, if not all games to disallow transferring or selling of accounts and resources. Look at all the EULA and it’s practically guaranteed that it’s the case. 

Simply because second hand sales don’t contribute to the bottom line. 

They don’t contribute directly. Indirectly, people may spend more and others that don’t spend because it is a “waste” might be willing to invest in something that they could recoup some part of later. Also, a new player that wants a well developed roster and is willing to spend money for it is the type of player that is now likely to make future purchases.

I agree though, many companies don’t think big picture. 

I kind of doubt that the rate of return on a sold roster would be enough to incentivize spending more on your account with an eye towards eventually making more money.  Hence the devs allowing selling off rosters would be a losing proposition.

I suppose it would follow a similar curve to used games, where you can get a lot of store credit from Gamestop if you sell back a 2 week old game but a dollar or less once it's a year or so old.  As an ongoing mobile roster-building game chugs along, you inevitably would have (in an environment allowing rosters to be sold) a market glut of retired rosters, and the amount you could charge for your roster would fall proportionately to how many people are trying to also sell their rosters.  So if you whaled for 3 months and sold it off, you could ask for a decent amount of money.  Play for 5 years and decide to quit?  There are thousands of other players who also have quit and will be trying to sell their rosters, driving the price into the ground.

If you could sell your roster (people try to and some "retirees" sometimes appear to have sold or given away their account as it starts playing in different ways and slices), the devs would have a much harder time making money off the new player with a souped-up roster than a noob starting out.  The game devs set up early bundles and would almost certainly make a lot more money selling those to new accounts vs a new someone who has a veteran roster who would probably question the ROI on lots of bundles, just like most vets do.

BlixTheFrog said:

CT1888 said:

BlixTheFrog said:

Ok, then, I'll be the one...

"Buy club" ?

20 people get in an alliance, everyone buys a stark salary (or several) so for ever stark salary you buy, you are getting 140cp.

Oh, wow. A Stark salary must be what I've spent on the game in the 11 months I've been playing !

In case it wasn't clear, there are temporary alliances.  The contradictory aspect is that you are likely collaborating (on your roster building acceleration) with people who ultimately will competing with you, or at least your alliance, for placement rewards.  Some alliances don't allow their players to go to these buy clubs and run theirs inside the alliance family only.

Yeah, I understand what you mean. Although there are examples to the contrary. Also, if D3 themselves acted as a broker and took a cut from the transaction all these (overvalued) assets would still be worth something to them as well. Not to mention they could control the pricing just as they do now. 

Used games weren’t detrimental to the companies who made the game. It was just a ripoff for the folks who traded them in. Still, greed and misunderstanding of the market has them looking to kill that avenue as well. 

I’m sure you are aware that games exist which still fetch a premium used, other online games have assets that sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars between players (and thrive), etc.

Even the reach of the ever increasing pressure to constantly grow capitalism has an end, people just don’t like to think about it.  You can’t have endless returns without something renewable. They won’t do it, that I agree with...I believe it could be done with a little creativity and forward thinking.

Jp1, there are products that has a healthy secondary market. Think about baseball cards. Or MTG (huge huge secondary market!). 

The physical products (baseball cards and MTG) have an inherent scarcity to the products. There is a limited print, hence the secondary market prices go sky high. The developers encourage such a secondary market because it creates a demand for their products. 

However, the digital game is different. There’s unlimited tokens, which mean there’s no scarcity in the long term. The Developers have to create demand by designing meta characters, so that it drives the initial demand for these characters, temporarily creating scarcity. This is what we see in the buy clubs because the whales wants to get first mover advantage.... the god-mode boost also drives the temporary scarcity. 

You mentioned about letting D3 has a cut for promoting a secondary market. It sounds logical, but history has shown that it will fail. A case in point is Diablo 3. They originally have an auction house, which Blizzard take a cut, but it flop so dramatically that they stop it entirely. 

jp1

Yes, there are examples of games...such as MMOs that have had or currently still have real world markets. 

Diablo III couldn’t do it, okay. That’s not a full indication of the possibility to do so. There are many ways to do a thing. 

Anyway, this will derail endlessly and clearly lead nowhere. So. I’ll just agree to disagree.

atomzed

jp1 said:

Yes, there are examples of games...such as MMOs that have had or currently still have real world markets. 

Diablo III couldn’t do it, okay. That’s not a full indication of the possibility to do so. There are many ways to do a thing. 

Anyway, this will derail endlessly and clearly lead nowhere. So. I’ll just agree to disagree.

Yup, we will have to agree to disagree
out of curiosity, what are the MMOs that officially sanction secondary markets? I would like to read up on those games! To see how economics work in games.