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

[Bukethead]

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 &!$$ 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

 

You have to buy the blueprint which costs credits...You don't have to buy anything with plat unless you desperately want it.

 

This is such an over reaction and a result of what happens when you don't look at all the pages in the market.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Bukethead

[Grilleds]

Exactly my point, even with the prices so high you've seen loads, imagine how many more there would be. There is a business plan here besides just the most money possible as quickly as possible, unfortunately high prices is just one popular method of reducing over saturation. Which is an issue because in general people like to feel special or powerful, if everyone is doing the same thing then they will get bored quicker and they won't feel as strong. By doing their best to trickle it through it means future players also feel better about obtaining it. It keeps up a more consistent demand rather than just one huge rush.

The argument regarding oversaturation falls a little short when one looks at the prices for all the Warframes, rather than just one. Frost and Rhino both cost the most, while Volt and 2 of the starter frames cost $5, however Mag, who is incredibly common now due to being a starter frame, costs more than the other two starter frames. Obviously not a lot of thought was put into the pricing of things in this game.

 

There wouldn't be an oversaturation of any one thing if the prices were reduced across the board. Also the cost for the Warframes isn't really the big issue here, its just the most gratuitous example of what IS the issue. The issue is that across the board, almost everything in this game is greatly overpriced. As someone else put it, FtP games mostly make their money through impulse buying of low price items (Some use advertising instead, but this is rarer). Something I can attest to considering I've cashed for things in other games before and the absolute highest amount of money I've ever dropped at once was $20 for a bundle deal that gave me an almost absurd amount of cosmetics. 

 

Since $5 only gets me 75 platinum, which can't really get me much, I'm very reluctant to throw any money at all down, and I think a large portion of the playerbase agrees with me here. Even if the cost on everything was reduced by 50% it still would seem a little high, but at least it would be within people's normal price ranges for impulsive spending.

[Iceciro]

The cost of these warframes is just too damn high; I've spent money on this game and on League and honestly picking up a new champion in league is far more of a gameplay changing experience than going from one frame to another in Warframe, primarily because so much of your power is tied up in the weapons you carry; the suits just give you base stats and energy-dependant limited abilities.

 

The pricing on these things is absolutly brutal comparatively; what I've gotten for fifty bucks out of Warframe is seriously dissapointing compared to the pile of content, both cosmetic and not, the same bill would've given me in League.

 

And then on top of that if I don't buy a frame directly, I have to buy a slot, which feels a little low, to be honest.  Like, AFTER doing fifty runs to get a system to drop and another fifty runs to get specific components to drop all of which are terribly boring 'run in kill boss leave' grindfests, then waiting 4 days for crafting to finish for no good reason, I also have to pay real-world cash to open up a slot.  Or I can drop 20 bucks.

 

The problem is, there are other options than that, like 'spend 20 bucks to fund an entire kickstarter game'. FFS, Steam just had Borderlands 2 on sale for 13 bucks. Tell me how that makes sense in comparison to a single suit in a free-to-play game, and I'll show you where the pricing model is failing.  I'm not exactly a poor guy, but I have to make decisions based on the entertainment value my money is going to get me, and 20 bucks for a single frame is pretty poor entertainment value compared to an entire game-of-the-year class game, or getting to watch an indie startup build an entire game from scratch.

 

I've bought Volt though, and if the other frames were around 75-100, I probably would have already bought more plat, too, and turned that into even more warframes.

 

The problem is people act like there's two options; pay for a frame or spend forever grinding it up.  There's also the option of deciding that say, Ash isn't different enough from my Loki to justify any time investment at all at those costs, and then I spend less time playing Warframe, I drift away, game withers and dies.

 

Believe me, with the number of people who buy skins in League, it's not a whale-supported game, and last time I checked it was only the single most popular video game in the entire history of video gaming.

[potatofamine]

If the game is beta then we should be testing different warframes and weapons to find bugs. How are we supposed to test warframes when they cost $20 each or take 4 days to build? Also, we start out with only 2 warframe slots!

Edited May 19, 2013 by potatofamine

[Belpharon]

Farming BPs for new frames can be a bit daunting as it took me 52 runs to get all the BP for my Frost.  However, aside from Potatoes, Frame Slot and Weapon Slots, there really is no issue farming everything else you need. 

 

First, I would highly recommend doing a bit of internet research to fine where everything you need.  Second, you need to unlock all the planets ASAP as many of the better places to go to get resources are higher leveled planets.   

 

After that is all a matter of taking the time to grind out what you need.

 

As far as the pricing...that is always hard to balance.  The developers goal is to keep the game fun but make it so it is enough of a pain in the rear to progress/aquire things that the majority will spend real money to bypass or speed up the progression.  If they make things too cheap then people will just buy all the content and burn out on the game in a few weeks or months.  Therefore they make it just expensive enough that some people with alot of excess cash will buy stuff outright while the majority eventually get frustrated with the slow pace and decide to invest money to speed things up while still at least partially farming items.  Over time this usually nets more money as these people will spend $10 here or there over months or years of play.

[EagleRise]

thats like asking "why do programmers consume food?"

which is also the answer to your question.

[Grilleds]

thats like asking "why do programmers consume food?"

which is also the answer to your question.

That explains the fact that it costs money, not its actual price. Bad answer.

[Belpharon]

If the game is beta then we should be testing different warframes and weapons to find bugs. How are we supposed to test warframes when they cost $20 each or take 4 days to build? Also, we start out with only 2 warframe slots!

 

This is first of all because beta is the new release.  I mean seriously, if they are charging money for anything, it really is release no matter how much they justify it.  In fact when the finally release the game, they will still be balancing Warframes and Weapons, adding new content and making just as many changes as they are now.

 

Also, even if these were legitimate open betas, that doesn't mean you would or should get every frame for free.  They need to test much more than just frames and weapons, they need to test the gameplay flow, economy, etc.  They can only do this sort of testing by simulating a LIVE environment which is pretty much what Open beta is, that simulation.  This is why you only have 2 slots and can pay money for Frames, they need to know how well this model is going to work 2-3 years down the road.

[Aretak]

Definitely agree with the idea selling things cheaper (like half the current prices at least) will see as much profit and a greater number of players satisfied.

[YourFriendlyNoggin]

The argument regarding oversaturation falls a little short when one looks at the prices for all the Warframes, rather than just one. Frost and Rhino both cost the most, while Volt and 2 of the starter frames cost $5, however Mag, who is incredibly common now due to being a starter frame, costs more than the other two starter frames. Obviously not a lot of thought was put into the pricing of things in this game.

There wouldn't be an oversaturation of any one thing if the prices were reduced across the board. Also the cost for the Warframes isn't really the big issue here, its just the most gratuitous example of what IS the issue. The issue is that across the board, almost everything in this game is greatly overpriced. As someone else put it, FtP games mostly make their money through impulse buying of low price items (Some use advertising instead, but this is rarer). Something I can attest to considering I've cashed for things in other games before and the absolute highest amount of money I've ever dropped at once was $20 for a bundle deal that gave me an almost absurd amount of cosmetics.

Since $5 only gets me 75 platinum, which can't really get me much, I'm very reluctant to throw any money at all down, and I think a large portion of the playerbase agrees with me here. Even if the cost on everything was reduced by 50% it still would seem a little high, but at least it would be within people's normal price ranges for impulsive spending.

Rhino is exp locked and up until the last patch was highly sought after, while frost is pretty much the best defence frame in the game gained from a mid level boss, instead of going against my point it's just more evidence of trying to throttle supply of popular frames. Similar situation with ash, he is an offensive stealth frame, who would be popular amongst many players who start with Loki and even Excalibur to a certain point, not to mention how much people seem to be yearning for fast stealth to become a bigger option.

Also in Volt, Loki and Excaliburs case they were the starting frames all the way up to update 7, they were the easiest to get and generally considered the base experience to new players, so it makes sense for them to be cheap to encourage new paying players to try them out first. It's likely that increasing volts price to reflect the current state of his difficulty to unlock would garner a ton of negative feedback so they won't swap mag and volts prices. Mag however has a cheaper price than most frames but it's probable that they didn't bring her down to 75 because they didn't want to step on too many toes in the existing paying customer base.

Look I'm not saying the prices aren't too high or low, but there is plenty of logical reasons why they price the way they do, I can almost guarantee that a fair amount of thought is put into their pricing models. We just have to think about it from the business side of things, not just the view of us the players.

Personally I would never buy a frame even if I was the richest man alive, it feels more satisfying to me when I earn it in game.

*edit*

Oh yeah and that FTP earns most through small impulse buys isn't entirely true, someone linked this earlier: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/meet-the-whales/all/

It's quite likely that people buying the grand masters and masters packs are the biggest source of income. Though it can be argued that it allows for easy impulse buying in game to already have a huge supply of platinum.

Edited May 19, 2013 by YourFriendlyNoggin

[ValhaHazred]

Why do people keep comparing the prices to LoL? There are only 13 Warframes and like, 100 LoL champions and none of them are available to keep for free. It's completely different circumstances.

Edited May 19, 2013 by ValhaHazred

[YourFriendlyNoggin]

Why do people keep comparing the prices to LoL? There are only 13 Warframes and like, 100 LoL champions and none of them are available to keep for free. It's completely different circumstances.

You can earn lol champions with in game currency but the better point would be that lol is the opposite end of the f2p spectrum from games like world of tanks where they can afford to make them cheap because they have such a huge player base. Whereas world of tanks has to make it cheap to stay competitive.

Warframe sits roughly in the middle so prices can be higher for some things while others like slots or potatoes can be fairly cheap.

[Renan.Ruivo]

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 &!$$ 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

Generally people use the argument that "This is only Beta", and the official response from the devs about the new prices was just based on that fact, and that with member growth they needed to "rebalance" prices. In my opinion, they didn't rebalance prices but threw them all the way across the room.

I came to this game five months ago praising it for it's variety in weapons and how differently each one plays from the other, but now that was all thrown into the thrash simply because aquiring a new weapon takes either a serious investment in money or in time. Without the buyer even knowing if they'll like said weapon or not.

DE does not have a big track record of doing screw-ups in this game, but as the game itself grows bigger, that track record is following suit.

At this point in time, i think that before rebalancing anything they need to rebalance their way of thinking on how they want to approach the F2P market.

Currently i do not feel the effects of the new market conditions because i pretty much bought all that was available with credits before, crafted the rest when resources were plentifull and still have 4k plat left from my GM pack. However, if i were to join the game in it's current state, i don't believe i would have stuck around long enough to get my starting frame to max rank, let alone spend any money on it.

Money and market are delicate subjects, and please DE, you need to take care about how you approach both of these subjects, lest you lose players. And worst of all, you lose free publicity from the players you already have, like me.

[Aretak]

Currently i do not feel the effects of the new market conditions because i pretty much bought all that was available with credits before, crafted the rest when resources were plentifull and still have 4k plat left from my GM pack. However, if i were to join the game in it's current state, i don't believe i would have stuck around long enough to get my starting frame to max rank, let alone spend any money on it.

 

This is very important, a lot of people justifying it are clearly people who have been playing the game a while like ourselves and forgotten what it's like to be a new player. I've never bought a weapon or frame with plat, only slots, potatoes and colours. I don't think I will ever at this rate either. It snowballs so that the more you have, the easier it is to acquire things.

[Grilleds]

About 5 friends of mine quit early once they found out how many hoops they have to jump through just to get a new Warframe, and then found out how overpriced everything is. The advertising for this game seems to be getting players in, but player retention is going to be an issue. Early success doesn't equate to long term success.

[-Scissor-]

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.

Hahaha. You obviously haven't been playing FTP games too long. I remember Nexon and their market, nexon charges 50 dollars for just 1 thing in most cituations, and nexon makes their own game gimped for free to players to force them to spend money on their market. My friend has spent over 4k USD on combat arms, and he got hacked and lost it all.

 

Atleast DE gives EVERYONE a chance to get EVERYTHING without having to be forced to go to the market.

[Kitaiikan]

The fact is, when the game turn to "open beta", buy a new warframe was already expensive, but anyway without spend money you could hope go to HL.

 

Now with the Vauban warframe, is think personnaly that DE take a different way than the beginning, she was more expensive whitout special reason, the market was remade and some point that a lots of people talk about wasn't fixed, the market get bigger but the mission didn"t change, the farm turn to be more hard (okay for mods that was really great), like Grilleds said, for the short term issue that was great, now for the long term, it's another story.

 

I love this game but i'm gonna made a stop and wait to see the way DE would give to him and saddly I think I'm not the only one.

[BoompigXD]

F2P games always do this. It will be advertised as free to play but in reality its more or less pay to win. Now i love Warframe and i have no problem with having to assemble weapons but i hate farming for warframe parts and waiting 3 days for a warframe to build (even though i've never built a frame it seems ridcuilus)

[Grilleds]

Hahaha. You obviously haven't been playing FTP games too long. I remember Nexon and their market, nexon charges 50 dollars for just 1 thing in most cituations, and nexon makes their own game gimped for free to players to force them to spend money on their market. My friend has spent over 4k USD on combat arms, and he got hacked and lost it all.

 

Atleast DE gives EVERYONE a chance to get EVERYTHING without having to be forced to go to the market.

Nexon is an outlier. NOBODY likes their business practices. Their games were typically just skinner boxes with a price tag on them, and once someone was hooked, they could charge whatever they want. So comparing them to DE is kind of pointless. Its like saying "Oh, this bad example isn't really all that bad, because I know a far far worse one".

[-Scissor-]

Nexon is an outlier. NOBODY likes their business practices. Their games were typically just skinner boxes with a price tag on them, and once someone was hooked, they could charge whatever they want. So comparing them to DE is kind of pointless. Its like saying "Oh, this bad example isn't really all that bad, because I know a far far worse one".

Yeah, nexon is bad. But that still doesn't disprove my entire point here. Many other free to play games do the same thing, restrict content to make players pay money. DE isn't doing this with warframe. Which is good.

[Grilleds]

Yeah, nexon is bad. But that still doesn't disprove my entire point here. Many other free to play games do the same thing, restrict content to make players pay money. DE isn't doing this with warframe. Which is good.

They kind of do. Warframe slots require platinum to acquire, as do weapon slots.

[Loswaith]

Warframe and weapon slots are a different kettle than the warframe costs themselves.  Plonk $10 (a cheap indy game price tag) into warframe and you realy have yourself covered for most of the game, and get to keep most of your Warframes and weapons (you will end up with around 20 weapon slots and 8 warframe slots, so not a bad collection to work with).

 

The whales comment stands true, but then they are often the guarenteed income. I would think that for a company it would be great to get whales, shark's (those that may spend about 50-100 and are smart with what they buy) and the fish (those that may invest $50 or less and are smart about purchases too) as well.

 

Frames above the 225 mark realy only going to hit the whales, 225 (an equivlent price of what is likely a reasonable indy title) may hit the sharks for those frames that are 'must haves' for the player leaving the fish likely only buying frames and slots.

[Tattutattikawa]

I buy platinum YES. But all my frames and weapons are hard earned and built... never seen an issue with that. Seems you are very unlucky or inpatient or both.

 

I use platinum for gear slots and orokin cata/reactor, yeah and colour scheme, i bought that too.

[Kahruvel]

Food for thought:

 

The prices are the way they are because some folks in the market are willing to pay for those items at those prices.

 

True, some prices might be a bit ridiculous. Others are more reasonable, like slots. It all comes down to whether or not someone is willing to pay those prices. That does not mean that the onus is completely on the consumer to make good choices, but it does explain part of the problem. The surge of folks who bought Vauban immediately probably didn't help the "warframes are too expensive" argument too much.

[ra9una]

The prices are rather high but let's not forget that short of slots and color pallets, almost  everything can be obtained for free over time which most games don't do so it sorta balances out.