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Warframe Market Suggestion: Cut Prices, Give Veblen Goods


MJ12
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The basic concept of a Veblen good is a good that is bought because it is so expensive and difficult to acquire. Thus the cheaper they are, the more profitable they are-and in fact, they sell more when they're expensive. This is opposed to a common good, which is purchased more when prices drop.

 

For example, fifty thousand dollar watches, million dollar cars, yachts, private jets, and so on. They have very minimal utility and are bought because of their price. You buy them to show off that you have money to burn. In Warframe, there are basically no Veblen goods. Everything can be acquired while grinding. There are no plat-exclusive skins or anything else. Sentinel cosmetics and colors are the exception that proves the rule. If someone wants to show off that they're a huge whale who spends $5000 on Warframe, they have no way to do so. This is a problem for DE because it's profit they could be making.

 

Meanwhile, 'common' goods, things which you buy for their utility and buy more if they're cheap, are overpriced ludicrously with the exception of Reactors, Catalysts, and maybe Forma if you don't count Clan stuff. This is also a problem for DE because nobody is buying them. And that makes guys sad.

 

The solution isn't to make the latter harder to acquire via ingame methods. The solution is to create more of #1 so people who want to spend tons of money on things with minimal use can do so and show off how rich they are, and lower prices on #2 so people who want to put in 10 bucks can get a ton of value for their money.

 

So for example, you might have custom Warframe skins which are super-shiny and full of glowing lines and hexagons because those are the future, costing 200-300 plat... but the Warframe itself only costs 125-150 Plat now. Someone who wants to make an impulse buy can. Someone who wants to show off their money also can. An Excalibur skin might make you look identical to proto-armored Hayden Tenno and retail for USD 15-20. Other, less exclusive skins should be cheaper (you should have a good range of cosmetics). However, you should have some skins priced for the people who have way too much money and not enough places to spend it, even if they're just simple things like solid gold guns with +100% Affinity gain.

 

Having multiple tiers of prices so that everyone has stuff they really want to buy is never a bad idea.

Edited by MJ12
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I like buying potatoes... Especially the blue ones, they are slightly tangy with a dash of salt. I stuff all of my weapons with them, well at least until I couldn't buy them with credits anymore (the weapons that is).

Edited by BlueEden
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Not bad idea, but my worry is that it would devolve into another "pay to win" scenario.  Part of the beauty of warframe is that there really are very few items, if any that are plat exclusive, which sort of gives a "leveled" playing field.  You can either play for 30 hours to get a void key and possibly forma with that, or you can just buy it at the store.  The key is to have an item that has a monetary cost that is greater than or equal to the "time cost", or the "cost" of using your time to play/ grind/ whatever this to obtain the desired resource.  If you make the monetary cost to much greater than the time cost, then it comes off as manipulative or greedy, thus generating "bad press".  However, if you make the monetary cost too low, no one will buy it.  You need a perfect balance, in which its the monetary cost is low enough to appear equal to or less than the "time cost", but large enough to still make money off of it.

 

Platinum exclusive accessories are a bit of a different story.  In this case, there is virtually no "time cost", at the expense of their only being a "monetary cost".  A perfect system right?  Well not exactly.  Accessories need to be designed and priced in such a way that the user feels they are gaining value by buying them, even if the "actual value" is non existent.  In this sense, you can't just say "well sell a bunch of reskins", cause the problem is much more complex than that.  Fortunately in this "market" the cost to produce these accessories is negligible, so the devs will make a profit on any sale.  Therefore it comes down to one thing- marketing.  To compare to another game, TF2 has this accessory thing down to an art, as there is quite literally a several million dollar economy within the game based solely on trade of these "accessories".  The reason it works here is that hats in TF2 have a "scarcity" to them, despite being a clearly non-scarce resource.  This makes many hats demanded, and people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for this "scarce product".  I believe if Warframe is to utilize an "accessory" market that is only obtainable through plat, they must do a number of things.

 

1. They need to create this "scarcity", or at least make it very evident when players have this "scarce product".  As you said, people will buy them just to flaunt the fact that they can.  However, they won't buy them if the difference it makes on appearance or anything is negligible.  However, they also need to be careful because...

 

2. They cannot make the accessories in such a way that the base character is impossible to determine.  For example, lets say that one accessory was an extremely large sombrero that can be put on any tenno.  Now while some tenno have clearly different body types, the body types overall are not distinctive enough that merely looking at a body can easily distinguish what a warframe is.

 

3.  Finally, the devs also need to make it so that bodies and other related objects are see through, particularly in corners.  Its already a pain in the &#! to aim down your sights in a corner and have your big dumb head blocking the target.  This problem would be even worse if we had accessories added to the mix.

 

Overall, my feelings on this are... apprehensive.  Could it be successfully implemented?  Yes.  Could DE make a lot more money with this?  Of course.  However, it is also very possible that this could just be a step in the "pay to win" direction, and one that I'm not sure it would be best if it was taken.

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I agree with MJ 12   There are plenty of people out there who love to show off their money.

 

Especially with something like a GOLD skin for AFURIS, or LEX or whatever.

 

What he also specified was using skins, simply set the skins to JUST look pretty, and give no benefit, and everyone wins

 

You can have your shiny GOLD afuris, and Anyone else can simply look on with envy,   wow that looks cool, but it don't make it any better than my plain AFURIS.

 

Please note that this in the long run although this will make DE some extra cash, those of us with SEVERE envy issues who WANT and CANT have, will NOT TAKE THIS WELL.

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I want to wave my phallus shaped credit card around

As stupid as this is I'll support this since there's a slim chance if whales spill more cash on trash like this the devs will stop trying to bleed out rocks from the rest of the players with things like Forma.

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Exactly.

One of the biggest lures in other f2p games with a cash shop is how it is INEXPENSIVE to buy useful things and expensive buy fancy items. It provides more lure to buy something nice. Business psychologists, the DEs need one or two or seven of them.

Take, for instance, Nexon. Now, the players of Nexon love to bash on them for their customer "support", but it is an inarguable fact that they put out when it comes to real world money. It certainly is expensive for me to go into Mabinogi and buy a dozen dyes, but if I don't care about vanity I can spend that same money buying twice as many EXP boost potions.

In Warframe, it's the other way around. For the meager amounts of vanity items, I can spent less than my hunter pack's total worth and still have enough left over to laugh at some peons. But lord save me if I want three or four weapons, there goes all my money. It's a reversal of the common (and proven) pricing of pixels, and they're showing why the common way is probably one of the better ways. MICRO transactions lure people to spend more. (Look at Farmville. You think you're only $1 in, but it's the 30th time you've done so. Maybe more, because you really like tomatoes.)

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Hell, consider the thousands of dollars that get exchanged in TF2 for hats. Hats. With particle effects! That have absolutely no gameplay value! (In fact it's kind of the opposite because they often become big SHOOT ME signs)

Edited by Kyte
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Excaliber Prime is veblen.

Yes, though he comes with a few other perks that introduce extra variables into the equation.

 

Frost Prime is veblen.

No. You can get him for free by grinding void missions. All his parts drop in the void, and void missions can be found as normal mission rewards, albeit really rarely. (87 missions that should drop void keys in and counting, still no void key reward. LolzRNG. :|)

Edited by Cpl_Facehugger
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I'm with you on selling vanity items, but dropping the price of Forma, Catalysts and Reactors is a little more problematic because they aren't always going to be in demand either.

 

If DE is selling 200 (pulled from my &#!) Forma a day at 20 platinum a piece right now, but could sell 500 a day at 10 platinum a piece, it would initially seem like dropping the price is the better option. However, it would not be unreasonable to say that those 500 a day would soon dry up to just 250 a day once people got everything they liked upgraded, and maybe spiking to above 500 again when new weapons or frames were released. Without access to sales data, it's not unreasonable to assume that selling upgrades for 20 maintains a more consistent and reliable influx of cash.

 

That said, it would still be wise for DE to offer the occasional 50% off sale when they have reason to believe that sales might spike in the future. Say, right after they tease the release of a new warframe.

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Yes, though he comes with a few other perks that introduce extra variables into the equation.

 

No. You can get him for free by grinding void missions. All his parts drop in the void, and void missions can be found as normal mission rewards, albeit really rarely. (87 missions that should drop void keys in and counting, still no void key reward. LolzRNG. :|)

 

 

hence why I said you have to pay money somehow to acquire Frost Prime by acquiring keys to obtain the parts necessary to forge the frame at this time meanwhile people who are farming and grinding will receive it much later.

Edited by Bones98
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Agree with OP 100%, there just isnt enough incentive for me to spend $$$ on a frame that i could spend a weekend farming to get. The prices are crazy high and I think they are unwilling to change them because they probably wouldnt be able to refund people who actually did buy them. They should add more cosmetics that can only be bought with a wide range of prices for the more extravagant stuff. Sentinel cosmetics is a start, but there needs to be more.

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Agree with OP 100%, there just isnt enough incentive for me to spend $$$ on a frame that i could spend a weekend farming to get. The prices are crazy high and I think they are unwilling to change them because they probably wouldnt be able to refund people who actually did buy them. They should add more cosmetics that can only be bought with a wide range of prices for the more extravagant stuff. Sentinel cosmetics is a start, but there needs to be more.

Exactly this. I think they locked their prices in early and now cannot change them.

There was an Ash and Dual Skana sale at one time. It would be nice if they ran sales more often to offset the high prices in the market, maybe tempting players to buy stuff.

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 the exception that proves the rule.

 

You're an idiot.

 

 

Agree with OP 100%, there just isnt enough incentive for me to spend $$$ on a frame that i could spend a weekend farming to get. The prices are crazy high and I think they are unwilling to change them because they probably wouldnt be able to refund people who actually did buy them. They should add more cosmetics that can only be bought with a wide range of prices for the more extravagant stuff. Sentinel cosmetics is a start, but there needs to be more.

 

The thing is for most people their weekend is worth more to them than 20 bucks.

Edited by ApocDream
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You're an idiot.

A paragon of wit and rhetorical prowess, ladies and gentlemen! Do enlighten us, O Wise One.

 

The thing is for most people their weekend is worth more to them than 20 bucks.

And for most people 20 bucks is worth more than a new frame. After all, if they're not willing to spend their weekend playing a game ('cause in the end farming is still 'playing the game'), then they probably aren't willing to spend 20 bucks on virtual goods for that same game either. $20 gets a lot of things, including other games. Like how the Humble Bundle gets you 7 games for a bit under $6.

Edited by Kyte
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A paragon of wit and rhetorical prowess, ladies and gentlemen! Do enlighten us, O Wise One.

Look up "exception that proves the rule" and you'll see why he's an idiot (hint: it's like when people say something is ironic when it's anything but).

 

 

And for most people 20 bucks is worth more than a new frame. After all, if they're not willing to spend their weekend playing a game ('cause in the end farming is still 'playing the game'), then they probably aren't willing to spend 20 bucks on virtual goods for that same game either. $20 gets a lot of things, including other games. Like how the Humble Bundle gets you 7 games for a bit under $6.

Farming for hours on end to get BPs and mats is not anywhere in the same realm as being able to do whatever you want while experimenting with a brand new frame. One is fun and the other is... not so much.

 

Also people spend 20 bucks on movie tickets and that's only 2-3 hours worth of entertainment.

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You're an idiot.

 

Hmm, I'm an idiot because I used the term 'the exception that proves the rule' because, of course, rules are 100%

 

In fact, the exception does in fact prove the rule here because the exception to 'everything is grindable' is apparently:

 

1. Extremely popular

 

2. A steady source of income not only in Warframe but in other F2P games in general

 

3. Not controversial at all

 

4. Proves that this is viable.

 

That's why I used it. Sorry I didn't use your exacting standards of the English language when 'exception that proves the rule' perfectly summed up exactly what I wanted to say. Oh wait you just called me an idiot no I'm not sorry.

 

I think grandmasters are pretty cool people as a rule. You're the exception that proves the rule because you're such an anomaly.

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Hmm, I'm an idiot because I used the term 'the exception that proves the rule' because, of course, rules are 100%

 

In fact, the exception does in fact prove the rule here because the exception to 'everything is grindable' is apparently:

 

1. Extremely popular

 

2. A steady source of income not only in Warframe but in other F2P games in general

 

3. Not controversial at all

 

4. Proves that this is viable.

 

That's why I used it. Sorry I didn't use your exacting standards of the English language when 'exception that proves the rule' perfectly summed up exactly what I wanted to say. Oh wait you just called me an idiot no I'm not sorry.

 

I think grandmasters are pretty cool people as a rule. You're the exception that proves the rule because you're such an anomaly.

 

You're an idiot because you have no idea what "exception that proves the rule" even means.

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