[Platinum] Has Anyone In The Warframe Team Done Any Maths Before ?

[101010]

One thing I would like to know is why ALL the items on market cost so much plat ? The gorgon can be bought for 50k credits or 225 plant (10+$), braton 10k or 75 plat (4$), Paris 225 plat......... So the question is are you trying to force people not to buy your things with real money and so not earn anything ? Or do you like 3 digit numbers so much that most of the prices are 100+ ? Other theories that crossed my mind involved the staff and illegal substances so I shall refrain from saying anything more... ;)

 

I just don't get the logic behind your system. 10k or even 50k was not so hard for me to get at all (even before the credits boost) so why the hell would I spend 20$ on some weapons ? As a student if I work in an internship I earn around 20$ - 50% a day which is 7 hours of work while I can play for 2-3 hours, have fun and get more then enough for my item at the end of my session.

 

I both a 9$ pack of plat (170) meaning I decided to invest some money in the game but every time I'm tempted to spend some money I'm quickly turned down by the price which is either around 20$ for an item or 4$ for some skin/color. I've done a study on F2P games, on the whole industry and what gives the most profit and micro payments where the most lucrative solution. 9$ is kind of far away from micro. Your prices should all be around 50-100 plat not more except warframes that can go a bit higher...

 

The only price you managed to get right is for slots and orokins or even sentinels. I've spent 120 plat on slots and orokins without thinking to much about it whereas I don't think I'll be buying a glave anytime soon. I really doubt many people want to spend that much plat on weapons whereas if you lowered your prices you might get more income.

 

Also 50-100 plat is not just a random number. That would mean people would have to chose between farming a little while or just spend 3$ right away to get the item. The sentinel is a good example.

Edited April 29, 2013 by 101010

[Renan.Ruivo]

One thing I would like to know is why ALL the items on market cost so much plat ? The gorgon can be bought for 50k credits or 225 plant (10+$), braton 10k or 75 plat (4$), Paris 225 plat......... So the question is are you trying to force people not to buy your things with real money and so not earn anything ? Or do you like 3 digit numbers so much that most of the prices are 100+ ? Other theories that crossed my mind involved the staff and illegal substances so I shall refrain from saying anything more... ;)

 

I just don't get the logic behind your system. 10k or even 50k was not so hard for me to get at all (even before the credits boost) so why the hell would I spend 20$ on some weapons ? As a student if I work in an internship I earn around 20$ - 50% a day which is 7 hours of work while I can play for 2-3 hours, have fun and get more then enough for my item at the end of my session.

 

I both a 9$ pack of plat (170) meaning I decided to invest some money in the game but every time I'm tempted to spend some money I'm quickly turned down by the price which is either around 20$ for an item or 4$ for some skin/color. I've done a study on F2P games, on the whole industry and what gives the most profit and micro payments where the most lucrative solution. 9$ is kind of far away from micro. Your prices should all be around 50 plat not more except warframes that can go a bit higher...

 

The only price you managed to get right is for slots and orokins. I've spent 120 plat on that without thinking to much about it whereas I don't think I'll be buying a glave anytime soon. I really doubt many people want to spend that much plat on weapons whereas if you lowered your prices you might get more income.

 

It's Beta. They can do math, but they need big numbers and buying trends to pinpoint exact prices for everything.

 

It's you who seem to think that pricing F2P items is easy as pie.

[Guest]

I find it odd everything is so expensive and then they have Excalibur, Loki and Volt at insanely cheap prices. 75 Plat for a frame, slot to store it and a potato installed on top of this. To me Loki was too cheap to pass up.

[Restricted]

Look at the World of Tanks pricing scheme, they charge 80 bucks for a high level tank and they're arguably the highest grossing F2P game out there.

 

Also, Loki Exxy and Volt are all dirt cheap because they are(were) starting Warframes.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Restricted

[MetalGerbil]

your forgetting build time. gathering the materials, the fact that market bought stuff comes with both an slot to keep the wep as well as the potato.

 

so the time it takes to get the mats, the potato (alerts and what not, hardest to go get) as well as a weapon slot (cost money to get) and the build time, its a question of:

 

is a few bucks easier for you to get than get all that other stuff? or give up a slot for the new wep you're trying to get?

 

it cost me 10 dollars to go to burgerking for 2 meals. by comparison i can get a few things in this game that will provide me tons of enjoyment, specially if i space it out and get just the slots and potato and farm the rest.

 

its always nice to get lower prices but honestly its not that bad. its not like they are asking you to buy everything with money. if anything i like how they made room in the system so you can put in as little as your willing to. just the money for the slot if you like or add a potato if you're feeling adventurous. even with the option to cut build time if you have everything else but dont want to wait.

 

system is fine -_-

Edited April 29, 2013 by MetalGerbil

[Renan.Ruivo]

Took me three months to build a Rhino. And i have a +5.000 plat pile.

 

Rhino costs 375, wouldn't even stirr the pile.

 

 

If they are actually overpricing things with plat and making it "easy" to get with no money, then that's their way of making you invest your time instead of your money. The former is very much more important to them than the latter.

[CaligoIllioneus]

I think all platinum prices are flawed except potatos, alt helmets, sentinels and slots.

 

Why would anyone waste like 150-200 platinum on a weapon when they can get the same with 32 platinum (slot + potato) and materials you most likely already have is beyond me. Is skipping that 12-24 hour wait that important?

 

Even if you don't have the materials, you can get them in no more than a single day.

[101010]

You know, there are games out there, good games, that cost 20$. So for all of you who say the system is fine charging you one item 20$, your argument is invalid... >_>

 

Also I don't see how I can ever take you founder guys seriusely in topics like this (really no offense meant). You just have thousands of plat and have spent hundreds of $ on the game. Clearly you don't fall into the "average player" group they should be aiming for.

Edited April 29, 2013 by 101010

[lncarnation]

Took me three months to build a Rhino. And i have a +5.000 plat pile.

 

Rhino costs 375, wouldn't even stirr the pile.

 

 

If they are actually overpricing things with plat and making it "easy" to get with no money, then that's their way of making you invest your time instead of your money. The former is very much more important to them than the latter.

three months? I.. I don't even comprehend that unless you devote really small sums of time.. it took me one day of farming the bp, one day of farming the mats

[Renan.Ruivo]

lncarnation, on 28 Apr 2013 - 9:58 PM, said:

three months? I.. I don't even comprehend that unless you devote really small sums of time.. it took me one day of farming the bp, one day of farming the mats

Farming the jackal is boring.. plus all the Rubedo.... then the credits after U7...

You know i just like to shoot and slice things, not farming. Plus Loc Work takes a good portion of my free time.

[lncarnation]

Farming the jackal is boring.. plus all the Rubedo.... then the credits after U7...

You know i just like to shoot and slice things, not farming. Plus Loc Work takes a good portion of my free time.

ah I see, that's makes fair sense. it was still fairly fun to me since it was one of the first I farmed lol. I suppose with my being more involved in farming style gameplay it's easier for me to have fun with it XD

[101010]

Look at the World of Tanks pricing scheme, they charge 80 bucks for a high level tank and they're arguably the highest grossing F2P game out there.

 

Also, Loki Exxy and Volt are all dirt cheap because they are(were) starting Warframes.

 

It's more around 20-30$ per tank (I played WOT for a while) and that can be compared to Warframes which I said could cost more, why not. The reason they are so lucrative is "pemium" (increases credits and xp income) and gold bullets (more dmg) ===> micro payments.

 

It's Beta. They can do math, but they need big numbers and buying trends to pinpoint exact prices for everything.

 

It's you who seem to think that pricing F2P items is easy as pie.

 

Only that F2Ps have existed for years now and the data is available in handy reports, pre processed with price ranges pretty much telling you: Hey guys if you make a F2P you should charge around 1-5$ per item not more !

 

 

If they are actually overpricing things with plat and making it "easy" to get with no money, then that's their way of making you invest your time instead of your money. The former is very much more important to them than the latter.

 

That's why I said they should fix a price range that will make people think, should I buy it now with plat or just play a bit longer and get it for free ? Because right now the choice is to easy.

Edited April 29, 2013 by 101010

[Mietz]

Only that F2Ps have existed for years now and the data is available in handy reports, pre processed with price ranges pretty much telling you: Hey guys if you make a F2P you should charge around 1-5$ per item not more !

 

Please do show us your sources because the current consensus is to go after Whales (the big heavy spenders) because they outweigh the rest of the spending population by a wide margin.

[101010]

Please do show us your sources because the current consensus is to go after Whales (the big heavy spenders) because they outweigh the rest of the spending population by a wide margin.

 

 

After a quick search on google:

 

"Depending on the game, a paying player is estimated to spend on average 5 - 30 dollars on games per month."

http://www.uta.fi/english/news/item.html?id=75079

 

This is not the best source but I really don't have the sources from my last years university project on F2Ps. If I had more time, I bet I could also find nice charts with $ spending depending on age and geographical info.

Edited April 29, 2013 by 101010

[Mietz]

After a quick search on google:

 

"Depending on the game, a paying player is estimated to spend on average 5 - 30 dollars on games per month."

http://www.uta.fi/english/news/item.html?id=75079

 

This is not the best source but I really don't have the sources from my last years university project on F2Ps. If I had more time, I bet I could also find nice charts with $ spending depending on age and geographical info.

 

That is an interesting writeup but has no real numbers attached to it. The formulation of the sentence you quoted also is rather misleading, of course the average spending is calculated from all purchases all paying players made, so some of them could spent 1$ when another spent 300$.

 

What would be useful to know is not the average, but where the -most- revenue comes from, the 5-30$ guys or the 100+ guys.

 

 

Mine:

 

http://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/gdc-online-2012-annotated note slide 19 and 21

 

http://blog.flurry.com/bid/67748/Consumers-Spend-Average-of-14-per-Transaction-in-iOS-and-Android-Freemium-Games

 

While these are not specifically for core games (and hence move lower price-points) since they talk about Kongregate and the second link about iOS, they are representative of the revenue and behavior in all F2P games (the psychology of the collective does not change with price-point)

As you can see in the second link the 13% that spends over 20$ (big spenders) makes up over 50% of the revenue while the high volume of low price purchases actually creates diminishing returns.

 

This is pretty much true for all F2P games, the revenue from Whales simply outweighs the revenue from high volume and low price.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Mietz

[101010]

Guess the opinion is varied but I don't think warframe has a way of making you periodically spend plat except maybe the CR and affinity boosts which are well kind of dull. Also new content comes in fairly often but the real choice is narrow since most weapons are just skins with lower stats and don't offer any serious gameplay modifications like the glave. Also lets not forget that most people came here from steam and hence have (in most cases) a way of paying (saved in their steam account) whereas in other F2P games making the first purchase is always the hardest thing to do. What they should do is look at the people that own their game on steam and at the number of games / DLCs they own. This should give better numbers.

 

What I'm trying to say is that the equipment is just overpriced. Even if I was a big spender and I had like a big plat discount and the items cost was around 15$ instead of 20$, still I doubt everyone likes to collect all the skins. Also why not drop prices with time not just put something on a sale randomly for a meager discount. This would motivate other players to buy as well. Right now all of my friends I started off playing warframe have said that 200+ plat is way to much for items. I'm sure most of the people out there had the same reaction.

Edited April 29, 2013 by 101010

[Mietz]

Guess the opinion is varied but I don't think warframe has a way of making you periodically spend plat except maybe the CR and affinity boosts which are well kind of dull. Also new content comes in fairly often but the real choice is narrow since most weapons are just skins with lower stats and don't offer any serious gameplay modifications like the glave. Also lets not forget that most people came here from steam and hence have (in most cases) a way of paying (saved in their steam account) whereas in other F2P games making the first purchase is always the hardest thing to do. What they should do is look at the people that own their game on steam and at the number of games / DLCs they own. This should give better numbers.

 

What I'm trying to say is that the equipment is just overpriced. Even if I was a big spender and I had like a big plat discount and the items cost was around 15$ instead of 20$, still I doubt everyone likes to collect all the skins. Also why not drop prices with time not just put something on a sale randomly for a meager discount. This would motivate other players to buy as well. Right now all of my friends I started off playing warframe have said that 200+ plat is way to much for items. I'm sure most of the people out there had the same reaction.

 

I have a more detailed post about the pricepoint here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/35324-understanding-monetization-and-microtransactions-an-evaluation/#entry326473

 

The bottom line is, the repeat purchases are exactly the right price (rush foundry, xp/cr boosts, mod-boosters) and so are one-time purchases like frames and weapons.

 

Like I said in that post Warframe is currently missing out on a major monetization feature like daily/weekly/monthly buffs, artifacts should be purchasable through the shop and be consumables.

This would also give more incentives to do alert missions once you collected your deck as they are currently permanent.

[Koover]

My opinion on f2p games has always been this:

if you only want to pay for what your going to use ( a frame, a potato), it should cost your more than a few bucks, maybe 5 or so. Thats about how much league of legends heros costs, as a comparison. 

 

Alternatively, should you pay enough money to "buy" the game for the equivalent of a full priced game ($20, $30, $60, etc), you should get much more bang for your buck, and get a significant portion of the game. League of Legends, again as an example, had/has a bundle pack where you could buy just about half to a third of the hero pool for $20 at target. 

 

tl;dr, the game should be f2p with the option to "buy" the game for a full price and get a decent portion of the content. 

[Mattyrogue]

I know this may be jumping the gun a little here, but why are you spending your Platinum on Weapons when you could be using it for say... Slots. At the moment Weapon and Warframe Slots are the only really mandatory thing that you could use Platinum on, because your going to get a hell of a lot more use out of say... An extra Warframe or two Weapons, than you are out of buying the weapon straight off the bat. Sure it means grinding and effort, but that's all in the fun of the game, and adds far greater satisfaction when you actually have it. That and two extra weapon slots are like, what? 12 Platinum? That's quite a bit of bang for buck, especially when you look at it from a completionist's point of view.

[ASH_PRIME]

Time Spent so far 100+ Hours =over 2 weeks of 40 hour week 'work time'

Grand Master purchase= 1 days pay

=HAPPY Gamer



 

[Lucem-Infernalem]

One thing I would like to know is why ALL the items on market cost so much plat ? The gorgon can be bought for 50k credits or 225 plant (10+$), braton 10k or 75 plat (4$), Paris 225 plat......... So the question is are you trying to force people not to buy your things with real money and so not earn anything ? Or do you like 3 digit numbers so much that most of the prices are 100+ ? Other theories that crossed my mind involved the staff and illegal substances so I shall refrain from saying anything more... ;)

 

I just don't get the logic behind your system. 10k or even 50k was not so hard for me to get at all (even before the credits boost) so why the hell would I spend 20$ on some weapons ? As a student if I work in an internship I earn around 20$ - 50% a day which is 7 hours of work while I can play for 2-3 hours, have fun and get more then enough for my item at the end of my session.

 

I both a 9$ pack of plat (170) meaning I decided to invest some money in the game but every time I'm tempted to spend some money I'm quickly turned down by the price which is either around 20$ for an item or 4$ for some skin/color. I've done a study on F2P games, on the whole industry and what gives the most profit and micro payments where the most lucrative solution. 9$ is kind of far away from micro. Your prices should all be around 50-100 plat not more except warframes that can go a bit higher...

 

The only price you managed to get right is for slots and orokins or even sentinels. I've spent 120 plat on slots and orokins without thinking to much about it whereas I don't think I'll be buying a glave anytime soon. I really doubt many people want to spend that much plat on weapons whereas if you lowered your prices you might get more income.

 

Also 50-100 plat is not just a random number. That would mean people would have to chose between farming a little while or just spend 3$ right away to get the item. The sentinel is a good example.

I would say that this is completely okay, because of the crafting time things work out extremely well. You also may want to take into consideration that paying more money while the game is in beta may actually increase the total budget of the game and as such make the game better as a whole. 

[101010]

Having the crafting option sure adds to the fun. I mean most of our gameplay now is centered around mod farming, resource farming or some alert. Meaning we are motivate to chose missions depending on our crafting goal. So in a sense it's nice the prices are high so that we can still experience that part of the game. On the other hand I have yet to see someone buying a weapon in one go instead of crafting it. I mean unless you have thousands of plat will you really consider wasting 200 of it on some item you can get in 1h of fun gameplay and 12h of waiting (the next day). This means that warframe is missing out on sales on weapons. And that's all I want to point out:

They could be making more money with lesser prices.

 

If not right away then why not drop prices with time ? As in make them really drop. Lets say half the price after a certain time (new weapons come out). Weapons around around 99 plat would sell a lot more.

[vieuxchat]

Time Spent so far 100+ Hours =over 2 weeks of 40 hour week 'work time'

Grand Master purchase= 1 days pay

=HAPPY Gamer

 

250 $ for one day of work O_o Wow.

 

Anyway.

I've also a grand master package and still have only spent plat on : slots, potatoes, color packs (but I wouldn't have bought them without getting so much plat with the founder package because I find them too costly), sentinels parts (but wouldn't have bought them without getting a founderpackage, because I find them too costly), MAG (before I knew how to farm the blueprints) and some revives when I first got into the game (bought with the starting 50 plat).

I would love to have the glaive, but I find the price too costly.

I won't buy other warframe since I know how to craft them. After all I want to play the game, not get everything without playing.

Moreover I don't know how many new things will com ein the next year (Yeah, I know I'll play it for at least that time, maybe even more. It's just too ... refreshing. I really need to slice and dice grineer after a hard day of work -___-)

I won't rush foundry because... seriously... the waiting gives more value to what you cook.

 

So, to sum it up : potatoes and slots (and colors. But without getting cheap plat with the founder package I wouldn't have bought them) are the only thing that I'll use plat on.

[ehhnoway]

Well when u buy a weapon with plat u get it supercharged and it comes with a free slot also

[101010]

Ok so you subtract 32 plat per weapon, now you still have to pay 193 for most of them... >_>

Edited May 8, 2013 by 101010