The Warframe Market Is A Joke And Actively Discourages Impulse Purchases (Updated, Includes Solution To Installed Catalysts/weapon Slot On Weapons)

[TheRealTuna]

Haven't read through the whole thread, but my main problem with the initial pricing was that the cost of Orokin Catalysts/Generators and Weapon/Frame slots was not taken into consideration. With your new edited option of allowing for the purchase of those items along with the weapon for a discounted rate, I have no complaints whatsoever with all of this.

 

Please please please DE, take everything that has been said with regard to this into consideration. Very good stuff, OP.

Edited May 26, 2013 by TheRealTuna

[Natsupoi]

Hell yes

[Chocobo]

I see most of you know nothing about money or how free to play works.

 

Actual analysts, the people who do this as a job, and have F2P data from dozens of games? The 'safe' figure is that the top 10~15% of your buyers will account for more then 50% of your revenue on free to play models.

 

Keep the top.. I dunno, 30% of spenders happy? You'll be making as much, if not more, then if you'd tried to eke out a couple of bucks from the other 70% (And give those big spenders less reason to spend their money. As most do it to get ahead or be 'big'.)

 

There are people who will spend thousands of dollars a month on a game. There are hundreds of them. I've known people who have spent $50,000 or more on 'free' games. Just a single person.

 

I know people would love for things to be cheaper and to get everything easily. The forums make that obvious.

 

On the other hand? I want Ash. I'll drop the 20$ on Ash because it is worth less to me then the time I'd have to spend farming the parts, the materials, building it, farming and crafting the reactor.

 

My friend on the other hand? He only really buys slots. Has farmed up pretty much every frame. Because he can and he's had fun doing it.

[Guest]

I see most of you know nothing about money or how free to play works.

 

Actual analysts, the people who do this as a job, and have F2P data from dozens of games? The 'safe' figure is that the top 10~15% of your buyers will account for more then 50% of your revenue on free to play models.

 

Keep the top.. I dunno, 30% of spenders happy? You'll be making as much, if not more, then if you'd tried to eke out a couple of bucks from the other 70% (And give those big spenders less reason to spend their money. As most do it to get ahead or be 'big'.)

 

There are people who will spend thousands of dollars a month on a game. There are hundreds of them. I've known people who have spent $50,000 or more on 'free' games. Just a single person.

 

I know people would love for things to be cheaper and to get everything easily. The forums make that obvious.

 

On the other hand? I want Ash. I'll drop the 20$ on Ash because it is worth less to me then the time I'd have to spend farming the parts, the materials, building it, farming and crafting the reactor.

 

My friend on the other hand? He only really buys slots. Has farmed up pretty much every frame. Because he can and he's had fun doing it.

I think you've completely skewed what the analysts have said. They concluded that a small portion of large spenders will indeed bring in a hefty profit, but they never said "actively screw over everybody else in favor of the rich people."

 

It's best to appeal to everybody, not just 30% of your playerbase because they can wipe their behinds with money. People with less expendable money giving that money to you by the end of the day is still profit you wouldn't have made if nothing was in their price range.

[Pisirk]

Why do people go to Walmart and how is the Dollar Store so successful?

 

amiright?

Edited May 26, 2013 by Pisirk

[Chocobo]

Except it just shifts the profits from the big spenders into smaller spenders who may or may not pay anyway.

 

If you know you can sell X many things at Y price, and that price is equal to or in excess of what you planned for, then there is no reason to lower it. Because those 'constant' purchases will still be there but now they'll be Z amount less profitable. Without any guarantee that anyone else will actually buy anything.

 

Profitability projections are a thing. People are cheap. People will make excuses to not pay for things no matter how cheap they are. Can you guarantee that it will increase profit? Plenty of failing games have tried to lower prices, change shops, etc. Still gone out of business even if the game itself was fine. because the 'cheap' audience still isn't paying.

 

Songs are a friggin dollar on itunes and torrent sites still have millions of downloads of these songs on record. A dollar. 100 cents. No matter how cheap you make things, there are a lot of really cheap people.

 

Find the comfort zone of the people who do spend money, who spend money regularly, and you have income.

[Chocobo]

Walmart and 'dollar stores' exist because people have to buy food. They can't avoid this. Walmarts most successful branch is their food division. Its why they started making walmarts that only sold food (Their 'markets').

 

There is nothing in a free to play game that people 'have' to buy. Ever.

[marowit]

OMG take all of my likes. finally someone who has a decent sense of economics and can actually explain them. DE you need to lsiten to this man/woman I know I'm only one person, but I'm about ready to walk away because I just don't have $20 every other day to spend on something i need/want and refuse to spend the price of a new game/week of lunch on one item. Unless your goal is the whales that will hopefully pay for me and everyone else you're pricing yourselves out of a sale. I play with a group of 10-15 people given the day and we all would have bought a stalker pack if it had been say $15 maybe $20 instead of its current price. so you missed out on $300 with jsut our group and probably hundreds if not thousands more that felt like us. Obviously only you know how many stalker bundles you've sold, but i can almost guarantee you're have 3 or 4 times as many if they were priced lower which would have made you more or twice as much money as it did so far.

Edited May 26, 2013 by marowit

[Pisirk]

Walmart and 'dollar stores' exist because people have to buy food. They can't avoid this. Walmarts most successful branch is their food division. Its why they started making walmarts that only sold food (Their 'markets').

 

There is nothing in a free to play game that people 'have' to buy. Ever.

 

I have never bought food from Walmart. Maybe gum and chocolate but no, there are better and cheaper places for food.

[mindlessframe]

I don't no, it seems smart of them to put platinum prices really high making every one get Founders pack because of the GREAT DEAL!

 

But then once every one gets the founders pack they could eventually lower the cost to the point where the founders pack is for plat once founders ends.  Because in reality plat cost should be what founders cost is for plat.  For Master level. Grand master would be a bit too good of a deal :P

[Guest]

Except it just shifts the profits from the big spenders into smaller spenders who may or may not pay anyway.

 

If you know you can sell X many things at Y price, and that price is equal to or in excess of what you planned for, then there is no reason to lower it. Because those 'constant' purchases will still be there but now they'll be Z amount less profitable. Without any guarantee that anyone else will actually buy anything.

 

Profitability projections are a thing. People are cheap. People will make excuses to not pay for things no matter how cheap they are. Can you guarantee that it will increase profit? Plenty of failing games have tried to lower prices, change shops, etc. Still gone out of business even if the game itself was fine. because the 'cheap' audience still isn't paying.

 

Songs are a friggin dollar on itunes and torrent sites still have millions of downloads of these songs on record. A dollar. 100 cents. No matter how cheap you make things, there are a lot of really cheap people.

 

Find the comfort zone of the people who do spend money, who spend money regularly, and you have income.

Comparing music and piracy to in-game purchasable items doesn't really work. You can't pirate items or get them for free with no effort on your part, you either play the game and work for it/hope it drops or pay up the dough. With music people type a few bits in a search engine, click two or three times and they got the music for zero expense.

 

People will spend money on things if they think it's a good deal. The problem is like you said, balancing the price just right so that you can earn the maximum amount of profit. But I feel you should do that without alienating large groups of people, and there are many F2P games that do thrive on this method.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

I can not upvote enough. I've been saying this and its perfect to see someone who can not only word it better, but put way more effort into it. Here's hoping DE can get their head out of the sand.

[Cauldrath]

While there are different levels of spending that should be catered to, buying something is an experience and something that should be tuned to be as good of an experience as possible at all payment levels, as people are more likely to do something if they enjoy doing it. Right now the experience for the buyer who wants to feel like they got a good value is subpar. I'm not in this demographic, but I doubt the experience for someone who just dropped a bunch of money on Rhino is going to be much better when they see how fast someone can farm for him. (Really, in this case, they should just swap the drop locations of Rhino and Excalibur and the prices of Ash and Nyx so there's a better correlation between price and difficulty of obtaining.)

Here's what I propose for new warframe releases:

1st release weekend: 750 plat purchase, comes with an exclusive skin (doesn't have to be complicated, just noticably different), not farmable, can be pre-ordered for 2 weeks prior so everyone who wants to buy it can

Following week: becomes farmable, price drops to 375 plat

Week 2: price drops to 225 plat

Week 4: is placed in the sale pool. Every week a pseudo-random 10% of all warframes in the sale pool (rounded up) are 50% off. For a random weekend every month an additional 10% of all warframes in the sale pool are 75% off.

Every 6 months: price drops by 25 plat until it reaches 75 plat.

Weapons could follow something similar, though probably bundled together for the first weekend.

[FiendFyre]

I agree, very much. This is a great idea, and I completely support it.

Honestly, DE might make more money, because more people would spend. I myself might buy some more platinum (Have Hunter Pack now, after much saving of money).

I mean, right now, the prices of plat are little too high, but the problem is that people who bought things with plat would probably be pissed because they are losing a lot of money now. But who cares.

[Mak_Gohae]

Every majorly successful F2P game uses incremental purchases for core gameplay items and often charges more for cosmetics.

 

I'm not bothering any more, dude. I and several other people have told you what you need to know. I keep repeating myself because THAT is the answer which you seem to be ignoring every time. DE's current profit margin which, yes I do not actually know, is irrelevant when there's a high probability this system will not only earn them more money, but make every person who spends money on this game happier.

 

Can you name some examples? Cause you keep repeating that same statement over and over with little backing.

 

The only game you mentioned so far is LoL and that game is PvP and had it's own unique situation.

 

You havent actually made a full statement, you just throw a general idea and apparently that is true for everything except this game which is seriously not true.

[Maikky]

Every majorly successful F2P game uses incremental purchases for core gameplay items and often charges more for cosmetics.

 

I'm not bothering any more, dude. I and several other people have told you what you need to know. I keep repeating myself because THAT is the answer which you seem to be ignoring every time. DE's current profit margin which, yes I do not actually know, is irrelevant when there's a high probability this system will not only earn them more money, but make every person who spends money on this game happier.

 

DOTA2 .

[Guest]

Can you name some examples? Cause you keep repeating that same statement over and over with little backing.

 

The only game you mentioned so far is LoL and that game is PvP and had it's own unique situation.

 

You havent actually made a full statement, you just throw a general idea and apparently that is true for everything except this game which is seriously not true.

Team Fortress 2

 

"But that was a full game you used to have to pay to play"

 

Team Fortress 2's profits skyrocketed when it went free to play. In its first year of going free to play it completely obliterated all profits it earned prior. People buy keys, hats, nametags, weapon description tags etc. in boat loads.

 

http://caas.raptr.com/the-secret-behind-team-fortress-2s-post-f2p-success/

 

"that change in business model drew in new players and increased the game's revenue by a factor of twelve."

 

League of Legends earns millions from people buying champions and other assorted goodies which are relatively cheap. The rich kids buy the cosmetics to show off in game.

 

World of Tanks is another example and I'm currently enjoying that game.

 

I've heard War Thunder has a similar model to WoT as well.

 

Dota 2 right now pretty much has the same business model as TF2.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Guest

[TheRealTuna]

Disclaimer: Mak_Gohae is notorious for arguing for the sake of arguing, and has been that way since CB. 

 

Anyway Inda, it's almost not worth your time debating with him. It will never end, and, because all he ever does is take the words of the person he is debating with and mutate them to fit whatever argument he feels like making at the time, will prove completely fruitless. Believe me, I know.

[Gregio]

I don't disagree with OP but there are several factors to consider.

Let's start with the prices of catalysts, reactors and slots. I believe those prices are fine as they are, even someone who only ever has the 50 starting platinum can buy a warframe and 4 weapon slots, so that's a nice start.

As for the sales of weapons and warframes.

All weapons and warframes come with a reactor/catalyst + slot on purchase. So, for Warframes, whatever the price of the frame is, you should deduct 20 for the reactor and 20 for the warframe slot to have the real price. That this reactor is pre-inserted and thus loses some usability is true, so maybe discount 30 platinum of the total price of the frame.

For weapons, with the same mechanics, the cost of slot+catalyst of every weapon is approximately 20 platinum + weapon price. That would make the Viper in game, for example cost actually 49 platinum (20 catalyst+6slot).

That is less than $5, though you have to spend $5 because of the catalyst and slot. Okay. Still not outrageous.
I also don't think the weapons should be available for purchase without a catalyst and slot. Just personal opinion there.

Other items suffer from irregular pricing, and I agree the game needs sales and stuff and certain prices should be revised.
However, there are other points to consider.

Maybe DE doesn't quite have a business perspective in regards to weapons and frames and actually has them unecessarily expensive to encourage the in-game acquiring of said items. Personally, if I had every weapon and warframe in game, fully leveled and with reactors/catalysts, I might've already quit the game a while ago. The leveling, crafting and such are a nice goal. Everybody likes leveling up.

I'm fairly sure they profit far more from the color bundle sales, catalysts, reactors and slots than anything else, they're probably financially secure in that aspect.

In conclusion. I support your idea, OP, but you have gone a bit overboard in your price cuts, in my opinion.
If all items were much cheaper, someone with reasonable amount of cash could buy everything and the game would be dangerously close to P2W.

Most things could use a cut in prices, your warframe prices seem reasonable, weapons... I'd say 50% more on all prices, a happy average between the current prices and your suggestions.
Or perhaps your current prices + the price of the slot + orokin artifact combo.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Gregio

[Story4]

I see most of you know nothing about money or how free to play works.

 

Actual analysts, the people who do this as a job, and have F2P data from dozens of games? The 'safe' figure is that the top 10~15% of your buyers will account for more then 50% of your revenue on free to play models.

 

 

So, by screwing over the people who don't spend much/aren't rich you are not getting 50% of the profit. Yes, i see, this is the perfect model. NOT.

[Mak_Gohae]

Team Fortress 2

 

"But that was a full game you used to have to pay to play"

 

Team Fortress 2's profits skyrocketed when it went free to play. In its first year of going free to play it completely obliterated all profits it earned prior. People buy keys, hats, nametags, weapon description tags etc. in boat loads.

 

http://caas.raptr.com/the-secret-behind-team-fortress-2s-post-f2p-success/

 

"that change in business model drew in new players and increased the game's revenue by a factor of twelve."

 

League of Legends earns millions from people buying champions and other assorted goodies which are relatively cheap. The rich kids buy the cosmetics to show off in game.

 

World of Tanks is another example and I'm currently enjoying that game.

 

I've heard War Thunder has a similar model to WoT as well.

 

Dota 2 right now pretty much has the same business model as TF2.

 

First.... do take note that ALL of the games you mentioned are PvP. This plays a HUUUUUUUUGE factor on what can be done, i dont really understand how people DO NOT see this. Second.... TF2 was four years old by the time it went f2p so, OF COURSE, profits went up because at that point probably everyone that wanted to buy the game already bought it. There werent any, or too few, sales being done at that point, at that point they made as much money as they were going to make selling the game. At that point.... why not make it F2P? Warframe doesnt have 4 years as a paid game, does it?

 

How about some examples of games that have a PvE section? Let's see how high the prices go in those types of games.

[Argoms]

Seeing as weapons are meant to be sidegrade-y and they come at level one, this would be pay to circumvent grind (of gathering resources). You could argue that the game is already pay to win because potatoes are only available through plat.

[Mak_Gohae]

Disclaimer: Mak_Gohae is notorious for arguing for the sake of arguing, and has been that way since CB. 

 

Anyway Inda, it's almost not worth your time debating with him. It will never end, and, because all he ever does is take the words of the person he is debating with and mutate them to fit whatever argument he feels like making at the time, will prove completely fruitless. Believe me, I know.

 

Mak Gohae tries to see every possible angle to things because those angles are there, stuff doesnt always have just one single path, one single possibility.

 

Mak Gohae using his super ability to see many different angles is the person that discovered how to use Radial Blast and get the maximum damage while everyone else was crying over how it did no damage.

 

Mak Gohae will now be known as Mak "Many Angles" Gohae.

[Guest]

First.... do take note that ALL of the games you mentioned are PvP. This plays a HUUUUUUUUGE factor on what can be done, i dont really understand how people DO NOT see this. Second.... TF2 was four years old by the time it went f2p so, OF COURSE, profits went up because at that point probably everyone that wanted to buy the game already bought it. There werent any, or too few, sales being done at that point, at that point they made as much money as they were going to make selling the game. At that point.... why not make it F2P? Warframe doesnt have 4 years as a paid game, does it?

 

How about some examples of games that have a PvE section? Let's see how high the prices go in those types of games.

I am not aware of any F2P games that lack PVP. Hell even Warframe has it now, and we all know it's going to be expanded upon. People really want it.

 

Does Spiral Knights have PVP? I tried that game for a little while and for the most part it seemed to be only PVE. Last I heard they actually lost a lot of their playerbase after increasing costs of many of the items in the store and making it more limited.

[Mak_Gohae]

I am not aware of any F2P games that lack PVP. Hell even Warframe has it now, and we all know it's going to be expanded upon. People really want it.

 

Does Spiral Knights have PVP? I tried that game for a little while and for the most part it seemed to be only PVE. Last I heard they actually lost a lot of their playerbase after increasing costs of many of the items in the store and making it more limited.

 

I didnt say look for a game that doesnt have PvP i said look for game with a PvE section to them.

That  means that it's ok if they have PvP but they must have a PvE part to them.