Why Do I Have To Pay $20-25 For A Warframe?

[doomtrigger]

I find it kinda ridiculous that they are charging so much for a warframe and also $5-15 for weapons i am lvl 29 and so far i havent collected any of the warframe parts and i have run the same missions over and over. I also just love the fact that we can no longer buy weapons with credits since farming for the required pieces take forever or they just dont drop at all i spent 6 hours yesterday trying to get 1 oroken cell which it never dropped  but i have 435738975398 salvage though ... i will not spend any money in this game at all.  

Edit: Also one other thing The crafting system 12 hours is way to long then to build the warframe it takes 3 days  i really don't understand the point of it taking for ever to craft gear. I think its there so you piss ppl off to the point where instead of them waiting  they just buy it or they get to the point where they just quit the game

Edited May 19, 2013 by doomtrigger

[Kiteless]

Yep, prices are a fair bit on the absurd side. They kind of missed the whole point of "free to play" when they made individual frames and weapons cost more than some full games.

[se05239]

Keep trying, it sounds like the RNG God is not on your side when it comes to drop chances.

[MrGrae]

And you both seem to miss the fact that you don't have to pay, everything is available for free, and DE still need to pay the bills. Get over it, no one is forcing you to pay.

[MotherCorpus]

I haven't had a hard time farming for stuff. Currently building 3 frames and one weapon.

 

Are you sure your farming in the right areas? Warframe wiki usually tells all.

[ZuryVarkoff]

you don't have to pay ... who sais that

[Kiteless]

And you both seem to miss the fact that you don't have to pay, everything is available for free, and DE still need to pay the bills. Get over it, no one is forcing you to pay.

 

I may not be forced to pay (and you should be able to tell that I already have paid a reasonable amount into the game), but I'd feel more inclined to pay for things more often if the prices were reduced. With the prices as they are, there's no impetus for me to spend money on impulse.

 

DE could price things at $100 per item, and you could still use the excuse that they need to pay the bills. But if no one buys a $100 item, those bills won't get paid.

 

The issue is not the idea of paying itself, but the actual prices.

[orangle]

Yeah I know for me, by the time I maxed my Excaliber I had Ash ready to cook, Banshee blueprints all found, and at least one blueprint of each other warframe.  It's a free to play game, they can charge as much as they want, and quite frankly I think their prices are fair.  If you want the best stuff in the game, you should have to pay more than you want to, the game was free to begin with.  If you really want anything in the game, you need to either pay or just be patient, because you can get almost all of the items, warframes, etc. in the game just by farming or alerts.  I think that's more than fair

[MrGrae]

I may not be forced to pay (and you should be able to tell that I already have paid a reasonable amount into the game), but I'd feel more inclined to pay for things more often if the prices were reduced. With the prices as they are, there's no impetus for me to spend money on impulse.

 

DE could price things at $100 per item, and you could still use the excuse that they need to pay the bills. But if no one buys a $100 item, those bills won't get paid.

 

The issue is not the idea of paying itself, but the actual prices.

Yes, but there's a limit, DE can't drop the prices to suit everyones' tastes else they won't make any money, I assume the prices are set as they are to A. get a return on purchases and B. to entice you to buy a little more plat since you nearly always have some left over. Considering how mercenary companies like Perfect World are I think DE is being very reasonable.

[Haerhitman]

I find it funny that in every f2p game there are always people who complain about the prices of the game items that 1. you can either support the free game you are playing by buying the items. or 2. play the game as is and gain a sense of accomplishment when you finally get the item you have been grinding for. Think about it, you don't have to pay a monthly fee to play this game, it's a free game, quit complaining and learn where the best place to get the materials you need to make the items you want, try the wiki, it tells you this info. 12 hours is not a long time to wait for a build, have some patience, start a build at night and in the morning you have it built, for weapons anyways. As for warframe build times, 3 days is not a big deal, i used to play EVE Online and most of the higher skills took 20-30 days to complete, and not a single person complained about that.  And lastly no one is forcing you to pay to get new warframes, I have been playing for less than a month and I have gathered the materials and blueprints for 2 warframes(one currently building), plus numerous weapons, it's not that difficult.

 

Play the game for free and quit complaining, support DE, or get out.

[AFKrey]

I guess your unlucky with the RNG, I have about 8 orokin cells and have built 2 warframes.

Be patient after my starter frame became lvl. 30 I decided to craft rhino which took me a few days to get all the materials and cash.

It'll be easier for you because after update 7 they give you more cash based on the level of your enemies and alerts.

Maybe your problem is that your farming the wrong places, I suggest you farm bosses because rare materials drop more frequently from them.

[Demobot]

I would never, ever buy with platinum anything I could craft on my own, the possible exception being the alternate helmets. I get more satisfaction from crafting things than buying things.

[Kiteless]

Think of it like this:

 

I spent an exorbitant amount of money on many $2-10 purchases for Leauge of Legends back when I still played it. I literally cannot count how much money I spent, and I probably wouldn't want to expose that number if I could. A lot of times, I spent that money on paying for new champions, in other words, on things that could be obtained in-game.

 

I look at the absurd prices at the market in Warframe, and I don't want to spend any more of money. I felt that the $50 for the Hunter pack was reasonable, considering the time I had spent playing, and to support the development of a game I enjoyed, but I don't want to put any more money into the game at the current price of admission.

 

In LoL, new champions would be released, and on the whim of them looking even moderately interesting, I'd pay the paltry sum to unlock them. In Warframe, I look at the daunting price of the frames and weapons, and decide that it's not worth the cost of investment. The money's still there to be spent, and the reasoning is exactly the same, but the market price itself provides me with little incentive.

[MrGrae]

Think of it like this:

 

I spent an exorbitant amount of money on many $2-10 purchases for Leauge of Legends back when I still played it. I literally cannot count how much money I spent, and I probably wouldn't want to expose that number if I could. A lot of times, I spent that money on paying for new champions, in other words, on things that could be obtained in-game.

 

I look at the absurd prices at the market in Warframe, and I don't want to spend any more of money. I felt that the $50 for the Hunter pack was reasonable, considering the time I had spent playing, and to support the development of a game I enjoyed, but I don't want to put any more money into the game at the current price of admission.

 

In LoL, new champions would be released, and on the whim of them looking even moderately interesting, I'd pay the paltry sum to unlock them. In Warframe, I look at the daunting price of the frames and weapons, and decide that it's not worth the cost of investment. The money's still there to be spent, and the reasoning is exactly the same, but the market price itself provides me with little incentive.

And you are one person.

 

Personally if I don't feel like grinding, or I want to try something new, I'll buy it, and that doesn't bother me. Your individual opinion does not speak for the majority, nor does mine. But given that DE doesn't seem intent on adjusting these prices I imagine enough people are happy to pay this for DE to be satisfied.

 

And to be perfectly frank I think warframes are of considerably higher design value than LoL champions.

Edited May 19, 2013 by MrGrae

[Kiteless]

And you are one person.

 

Personally if I don't feel like grinding, or I want to try something new, I'll buy it, and that doesn't bother me. Your individual opinion does not speak for the majority, nor does mine. But given that DE doesn't seem intent on adjusting these prices I imagine enough people are happy to pay this for DE to be satisfied.

 

And to be perfectly frank I think warframes are of considerably higher design value than LoL champions.

 

Considering the success of both LoL and cheap app driven games with low-cost cash shops, I would say that the market for literal micro transactions is considerable. And it's a market that Warframe's current price points exclude.

 

As for the design value of a new frame to a LoL champion, the difference is irrelevant. At the end of the day, you get a new character to play with. The resources invested may be different (although I would actually suspect the reverse to be true, since the competitive PvP nature of LoL would require much more playtesting and balancing), but the end perceived value is largely the same: you're paying for another alternative playstyle, essentially.

What's more, being a digital product, supply and physical limitations are a none issue. Any money made through these digital purchases is money that goes to DE, essentially. With that said, my reasoning is that by lowering the prices, DE would act to entertain more impulse buys and widen the paying consumer base, potentially leading to a more profitable avenue than the prohibitively high prices it has now.

[Lumireaver]

I've heard... that free to play games survive because of a relatively small group of big spenders, colloquially known as whales. These guys spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars and make up a large portion of FTP revenue. http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/meet-the-whales/all/'>The more you know?

[-GSB-BlueMonster]

They shouldn't adjust the prices of the Frames. They are all really fun and unique and should be worked for. It really extends the lifetime of the game and lets face it... farming is the best way to do that. I spent a little money on this game; the only things I've purchased were inventory/frame slots and orokin catalysts/reactors. I have 6 frames that I've built and I have only put about 50 hours in the game (a lot of it not even playing...) So, it really is a matter of being persistent and a little bit of luck.

[Kiteless]

I've heard... that free to play games survive because of a relatively small group of big spenders, colloquially known as whales. These guys spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars and make up a large portion of FTP revenue. The more you know?

 

But I would imagine that no one goes in expecting to spend hundreds/thousands of dollars. It happens over a bunch of little purchases, not a few big ones.

[MrGrae]

Micro transactions lead to situations like Sim City. We all know what happened there. So I'm going to ignore that point.

 

Design value is very important, it takes several people a reasonable amount of time to produce a warframe, coding it's powers, developing the hi-res textures, etc, therefore it costs more to create them.

 

And again, DE seem to be on top of things, so they don't NEED to go for the whole cheap-many-purchases approach, which personally I despise anyway since you inevitably start monetising things that would be standard just so you have more products to sell.

 

Look at it this way. DE is offering you everything for free already, every tiny thing, hell I wouldn't have done that. Compare Warframe to LoL and WoW and D3 as much as you like, it's irrelevant, they're different games targeting different markets, parts of these markets may over lap but mostly they don't. Now, DE gives you the option to buy these bits of free content for convenience sake. Sure, it's more expensive than some might like, but you don't have to pay, and plenty of people clearly don't mind paying. So, answer me this, why are you bothered by this? Because you think DE needs the money? They seem alright honestly. So why? Because you want to buy them for less. That's all it is.

[OoKeNnEtHoO]

A little Economics:

 

Law of Demand states that there is an inverse relationship between quantity demand of a good and  price of the good itself, ceteris paribus.

 

Of course, a change in price will not always result in a proportional (1 for 1) change in quantity demanded and vice versa.

 

Thus, price elasticity of demand is the degree of responsiveness of quantity demanded of a good to a change in the price of the good itself, ceteris paribus.

 

In other words, a good with price elastic demand will have a more than proportional increase in quantity demanded following a fall in price.

 

In general, revenue = price per unit X quantity demanded

 

so a fall in the price of a price elastic good will give a rise in revenue while a fall in the price of a price inelastic good will give a fall in revenue, ceteris paribus.

 

In general,

 

Goods that tend to be price elastic are wants. Think of things like your expenditure on holidays, replacement of old TV with a big screen one, decorations in the house, recreation, non-essential for survival needs, comfort needs etc

 

Goods that tend to be price inelastic are needs. Think of things like your food, housing, utilities, security devices, basic needs etc.

 

Price elasticity of demand of a good and even demand itself differs from individuals.

 

The issue is is your demand for items in the game price elastic or price inelastic?

 

If the majority of the players have a price elastic demand on the items, lowering price will generate more revenue.

 

If not, it is not advisable to drop its price since prices tend to only fall and not rise without some form of resistance.

[Galaxy-Train]

I can't comment on the actual price rates, but DE's gotta make money. This means either going P2P or microtransactions.

More importantly, you're not forced to buy anything. All items, warframes, components necessary for gameplay (as well as some bonuses like potatoes) and whatnot can be acquired in-game by way of credits or alerts.

Anything that is plat only is purely icing on the cake.

Of course, it's an inconvenience to F2P players, but not so much that it's gamebreaking.

[PSNick]

While it is true that prices are a little off the charts, it is a grinding game and it makes you actually play a lot to farm the materials you need. I personally spent about $10 buying platinum solely to buy slots (which i believe is the only good use for it, and didn't even use half yet), since everything else you can get in-game. Generally i'd advice people not to buy frames or weapons, you have the extra colors if you like or the slots and mod packs if you really want to spend in something.. but since almost anything you can get playing, it's quite a waste of money to buy most things with platinum.

[SavagePaladin]

Hey I bought some frames (Nyx, Volt and Saryn) as I haven't really found parts yet.  I don't feel terribly ripped off.  I doubt I'll buy more, though the new guy (ugly as he is) has appealing powers.

 

I don't think one should go crazy and buy tons of them, but having the ones you like most isn't a bad deal at all.

[nerfpls69]

People here seem to be missing the fact that vauban is pretty much plat only, so the "you can get everything for free" thing doesn't really apply there.

Edited May 19, 2013 by nerfpls69

[Kiteless]

One problem, I find, is that you don't know who you like most until you've already wasted time/platinum getting them. A trial system (perhaps a shooting range in an environment similar to the mastery tests) where you could try out frames/weapons before buying them could help to mitigate buyer's remorse, and encourage more confident buying.

 

As it stands, you have to put considerable time/money into getting anything in Warframe, and if it ends up not being what you wanted, the sense of disappointment is only exacerbated.

 

It doesn't take getting screwed over many times to make someone scared of getting burned again. It's a lot easier to dismiss a poor purchase when it's not as significant as the cost of Warframe's.