Attention Developers! Microtransaction Strategy Pointers.

[Laggoz]

Hello DE,

 

I started Warframe 3 days ago as a casual shooter and co-op fun with bunch of friends. I did my research into your monetization system and had extremely mixed feelings about it. Controversial enough to make me write this post on your forums. 

 

You have one of the best free-to-play models on the market. Being able to achieve almost everything by only playing not paying. The only limitation is the inventory sizes which require a small purchase of platinum. I genuinely applaud you for running such model and sticking to it.

 

However you have probably one of the worst pricing systems of any MMO/MMORPG that has been released. You are heavily focused on big spenders and overall everything you are selling is simply overpriced. The way you are pricing the platinum and prime access packs is downright expensive. Not a single MMO google searches this well with the words "I am only supporting the developer". While this is a great thing on one hand it's also extremely bad on the other hand. Your customers are not getting value for their purchases, they are simply buying prime and platinum to support You.

 

Have you ever heard anyone go to IKEA and say they only buy furniture from there to "support the company?". Most likely you haven't because people want debatable quality at a low price that provides them a lot of value.

 

To appeal to the masses and provide better value to new customers and old customers you need to overhaul your pricing system. I'm sure you have person in charge for the microtransactions strategy but me and my strong background in retail business will help you here for free. 

 

The problem:

 

The base price for platinum is 0,0598... € per platinum. Let's round it up 0,06€ for simplicity. Are players actually buying platinum at this rate? No. Only customers who don't care about money or have so much of it that it doesn't even make a dent in their wallet. Basically whales and players who skipped their research are buying plat at 0,06€. While this base price would be fine if you actually priced everything according to it. In all honesty you are pricing everything as if it was 50% less. The basis of your pricing is at 0,03€~ while you are asking customers for 0,06€. That's the definition of overpricing. This degrades the value of platinum and leaves customers feeling as if they don't get value out of their money and instead justify their purchase with the idea of "supporting the developers".

 

Then again why are you doing this? Because of the log-in discounts of 50-75%. Players are mainly buying platinum at 0,03€ or even 0,015€ when receiving the 75% discount. To actually have reliable pricing you are forced to raise the pricing point by 50% because in reality most of the customers are buying plat at 50-75% rates.

 

This discount system leads to a microtransaction format where you are charging 50% extra base price because customers have a game mechanic to cut your platinum price by half or even 75%.

 

The real issue:

 

50-75% discount on platinum is the normal rate. Everything bought without the discount is nearly 50% overpriced. Prime access packs are far too expensive due to the 50% extra on the platinum price which you cannot cut with a game mechanic. There simply isn't enough value in them. Players are forced to wait for a lottery pop of 50-75% discount to be able to purchase platinum at the designed rate.

 

Which leads to players buying Prime access / Normal priced platinum only to "support the developers" instead of actually getting value out of them. The lack of value also decreases your sales towards more sensible customers.

 

Solution:

 

1) Decrease the base platinum price by 50%. Make the basis of everything 0,03€/p. As base platinum value is decreased you can also make Prime Access and Prime accessories cheaper. Try finding a real sale prices for the packs, starting from 29,95€ or 34,95€. Starting price beyond 40€ is simply too much.

 

2) Remove the 50-75% lottery discount pop. If you want to stick to this system only allow 10-20% discounts on the platinum prices. Otherwise you are degrading the currency once again.

 

These changes will improve the value of platinum by far. It will also allow customers to decide when to buy platinum instead of waiting for 50-75% lottery pops. 10-20% isn't enough to wait for weeks or months but 50-75% surely is.

 

If you lower the prices, you will sell more.

If you sell more you get more customers.

Customers can become loyal customers.

Loyal customers buy even more and attract more customers.

 

Overpricing is one of the worst mistakes for microtransactions because it turns away potential customers instantly when they think "I can't afford this, ever." Microtransactions are after all supposed to be small. 45€+ for prime access is far from a microtransaction and considering the value of current platinum it's really not worth to buy unless you have 50-75% discounts running.

 

Personally I'm very reluctant to purchase anything with this kind of pricing system however I'm more than happy to play the game with the current free-to-play model.

 

//Lagoz

Edited November 27, 2014 by Laggoz

[Hypernaut1]

good and well thought out, in depth analysis. they'll change it tomorrow and offer you a job as their financial advisor.

/s

Edited November 27, 2014 by Hypernaut1

[Grimm]

you need to learn more about the in game economy before coming to the conclusion that its expensive. also steven has said many times price won't change.

 

i dont think you know it but your thread is flamebait unintentionally. the players in this game love it and love the De we get to interact with. so you coming in her with 3 days expenses and practically S#&$ting on it wont go down well

 

de dont want players who will quick spend their way to done everything. they want players that will spend the time and love the content they build for us.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Grim-CM-

[Shehriazad]

Daily login bonuses should be removed and prices of items should be lowered by 25-50% (depending on item)


That way the store would instantly be more balanced.


In theory you have to pay 20$ just for wanting to keep every Warframe

In theory you have to pay well above 50$ for wanting to keep every weapon.

Buying weapons and frames is outright expensive. 




And now if you say that you can trade for plat...doesn't matter...SOMEONE has to buy this plat "for you" then. 


While the model itself is great...DE completely refuses to look at the pricing of said model and says that it's great...while it actually is not. 

I know that a lot of people (6 million or so actives according to DE) of the current playerbase are willing to put up with it...but that doesn't mean that this is optimal. 

If the pricing was just a little nicer on some things...or you dropped the obligatory weapon/frame slots from the market...everything would be fine. (And now before you say that you can play the game without keeping all the frames/weapons....the majority of people will not like the thought of having to throw away their gear because of the forced limit)

Edited November 27, 2014 by Shehriazad

[LascarCapable]

Thread cleaned.

[TheGuyver]

I'm pretty happy with the market, and the pricing for the cosmetics at least. The weapons are overpriced yeah, but if you buy them instead of build them that's your choice and your money. I've spent money on some plat before and was more than happy to because of how much I actually like their free to play model here. It's honestly one of the best I've seen in any F2P game.

 

As someone else said before, you should probably play more than three days before making a post like this. Your opinions are still valid, but time will ease you into how the market is.

[Somedude1000]

Platinum prices will never change. It's a common thing in the MMO world to have extremely high values on items, and depend on a small portion of the community spending large sums of money at one time, rather than a large portion of the community consistently buying small sums of plat.

 

But then again, its P4C, I don't think they actually wanted anyone to buy stuff straight from the shop consistently. As long as they dont force us to buy items by grindalling them ot making them too difficult to get, I guess its alright.

 

Most people use plat for simple items like forma, accesories, potatoes etc which don't leave a huge hole in their pocket and cost about a few real world dollars each.

 

Prime access is there so we can further support the games development, it's expensive, but then again, you don't really have to buy it, it's there fr exclusivity, I think

[gnat6]

Overall I agree with you there are a few things that are quite reasonably priced like sentinels and arguably orokin catalysts and reactors and color packs but the rest of the pricing only makes sense if DE is trying to make people not want to purchase anything with plat.

[Twilight053]

This thread is the proof that DE's F2P business model is working. Now, you know platinums are very expensive, occasionally they gave a 50% discount to it and at most 75% discount of it, creating the allusion of a very good deal. Believe it or not, their microtransaction strategy makes us want to buy it, not force it.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Twilight053

[Laggoz]

@TheGuyverOne

 

I personally don't think any amount of played time will change my opinions about the system. The base of platinum pricing is broken because it relies on the 50-75% lottery discounts. Even though I'm reluctant to buy anything I will most likely spend some money on platinum if I get a 75% lottery pop.

 

In all honesty the 75% discount is a sweet deal but anything below that is debatable as well as the prime packs. Personally I don't think the value is there.

 

@Somedude1000

 

Never say never. ;)

[Seraphyx]

Completely agree with you about platinum purchases in the market being overpriced.

 

I haven't spent any of my plat from founder's program on anything other than some slots, maybe a total of 200 or so plat over 500+ hours.

 

I'm not bothered by the prime access prices, though. They are very clearly aimed at people with plenty of disposable income.

 

You bring up good points but with all that said, DE appears to be doing very well for themselves with the current pricing. The thing that I think separates WF from many other MMOs is that you can directly trade platinum, the premium currency, in-game. Maybe most people are getting their plat from "whales" or occasional people who get lucky with the discount and have a lot of it. I don't really know and I doubt they would be willing to share their financial details/stats unfortunately. It's something I think a lot of people would be very interested in seeing.

 

Maybe people ARE buying plat and are fine with the prices. Maybe the "micro" purchases are the cosmetic items which are far more reasonable but still a bit on the expensive side imo. I would be curious to see how many people who purchase plat actually spent it on warframes and weapons.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Seraphyx

[sp33chle55]

Discounts make people buy things. Which economy do you live in? You think you save a few bucks, but in reality the discount caught you and you will tend to use every discount you roll (increasing de's income). Its a psychological phenomenon and a valid strategy on the market.

Edited November 27, 2014 by sp33chle55

[Burq]

Having sank around 80 dollars on the game since I started on February, the system they have works as shifty as it can be. I only buy plat during discounts and only when I get at least 50% off because you are right OP, the prices are BEYOND ridiculous on weapons, frames aaaaaand maybe color packs, for slots, potatoes and other cosmetics it's pretty fair.

 

THAT said, I'll never, EVER will buy prime access, now that a ripoff if I ever saw one; as swagtastic as the prime armor is is not worth it.

[SlapClown]

 It is there for the pay to get it done fast players who don't mind blowing crazy money to get everything done  fast and should stay that way..Also it helps with the way RNG is to give back to farmers for putting the time it is a good system just sit back and learn and you will see it works  well for the whales and the farmers ..

The casual spender is also set up nice as the things he really need do not cost a arm and a leg ..

 

[Retrosaur]

Only 3 days in-game and you're already speaking on behalf of the general population of Warframe? Way to go kiddo..... /s

[Lowsodium]

Only 3 days in-game and you're already speaking on behalf of the general population of Warframe? Way to go kiddo..... /s

 

If someone who had been playing from the very start said it, would the statement have more value?

[Laggoz]

Only 3 days in-game and you're already speaking on behalf of the general population of Warframe? Way to go kiddo..... /s

 

The opinions of people coming outside usually deliver more potent and accurate descriptions than people who stare at the same thing for years.

If I were a founder my opinions would more likely be biased because of my deep love for the game. As I stated in the OP I did my research so I'm not just throwing statements that say "Everything is too expensive!?!?"

 

And for clarification I'm not speaking on "behalf of the general population" these are my expertise and opinions.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Laggoz

[Deus_X_Machina]

I agree with the analysis of the thread starters. I have thought along the same lines too. And I am by far not new to Warframe.

 

On the other hand, the question is:

I they half prices, do they double the sales?

 

I might not like it in some cases, but on the whole, its probably most important for DE to get the most Money to support their game.

And to get the most, they have to hit near the sweet spot between cost and number of sales.

[HonorGuard2074]

Look I think DE way is best , they stay in business with profit , and keep it full F2P , we get a good game that lets us play also they give 1k of plat x3 every month

[Niryco]

If you think about it, since people usually buy plat when they get discounts, they can set a fixed amount of discounts via the slot machine daily of say maybe 50% of the players will get discounts. They can then calculate the probability that these players will spend and probably increase the chances of discounts given to players who spend more often while reducing discounts to players who spend less. This can be done by algorithms.

 

This would allow them to have a steady amount of revenue into the company, probably enough for them to operate and grow. On the other hand it would also allow DE to control the flow of platinum and choose how scarce it should be which enhances the trading system for platinum as well as have players spend more steadily then in a large bulk.

 

When players spend steadily the company's growth would be stable and not erratic. The last thing warframe wants is their product to reach a saturation point too early and lose their playerbase or spending portion of it since the game is supposed to last long term. If players were to spend daily it would become a habit that is harder to break and thus ensures that if players were to stop spending it would not have such a major revenue cut but small chips.

 

Once the revenue dips to a certain point, they would probably release more content, therefore ensuring they have more spending again. The finance department of DE has this business game model planned out for the long term, heck they probably have majors in business, finance , accounting and maybe economics behind their marketing strategy which are working out dead lines for new content and what they can do and focus on to ensure the game can grow steadily and healthily.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Niryco

[SmokinDevil]

Microtransaction tip. Remove them. Banish the idea from existence. F2P is an amazing lie.

 

That's just me though.

[SHOCKED]

OP has some valid points.

[Serafinia]

This post is true and I am agree with it.

[Sziklamester]

This current system is not so good. What OP said is valid and that could be benefit for devs too if they consider to change their pricing. I am almost never buy platinum only when got at least 50% discounts but otherwise not so worth to buy platinum. Quantity and quality not passing.

[AM-Bunny]

I do think the plat pricing is ridiculous. While the occasional discounts encourage impulse buys, several times, I have *wanted* to buy platinum but couldn't bring myself to, because I might get 75% off if I just wait a while. I've never gotten the 75% off. It's positively ridiculous that you have to get one of these lotto draws to validate the price of plat.

And that's not even getting into the price of nano spores, skana, etc...