Lets Talk Microtransactions

[Sobezilla]

I spent tonight lurking on some threads relating to platinum (directly or indirectly) and commenting on others. I decided to make a new one here taking a different way of laking at things.

Nothing in this world is free, even water and air have a cost (water bills and carbon emission tax) so why should something that people actual have to make themselves (I haven't seen anyone slamming hydrogen and oxygen atoms together to make water lately) be any different? A free to play game has to generate revenue for those involved in its production somehow, enter the microtransaction. Some games you merely pay for a copy of the game itself, some have a monthly/annual subscription fee and others have an optional in game currency.

A great deal of psychology goes into some free to play mmo type games. Most notoriously Zynga games on facebook offer a game for "free". However, to gain any enjoyment out of them at all people end up purchasing the zynga currency at one point or another (for an in browser game for Fcuk sakes?). Now in warframe we have platinum as that in game premium currency, the game definitely leans towards encouraging you to invest in some but is in no way unfun without it. 

A look at how Zynga shows you how shameless they are. In farmville/cafe world, you make food or crops or whatever Sh!t to progress in the game. On top of that, you also have the ability to expand your farm/cafe and deck it out. In warframe we craft weapons and new warframes and work on our respective dojos in much the same manner. The thing is farmville, produced products expire after a certain amount of time. Crops wither, cows die or something, making your efforts utterly useless unless you come back like clockwork for that short window between completion and expiry. Making you subject to the advertisements associated with that game and web page. In warframe when something is completed in our foundries, it sits there, happily, waiting for us to return and press claim without spontaneously Shiitting all over itself and becoming unusable. In Zynga games to get decorations and associated pointless things you are required to get certain items which can only be gained by using premium currency (seriously what the sh!t is a premium currency? A euro possibly? Possibly chinese yuan in the near future) or inviting x amount of friends to join the game. For the dojos you need forma, which can be purchased for 20 plat a pop and be found for free as a blueprint drop, login reward or an alert mission prize. (So far I have gotten 4-5 free forma, which surprised me). The Devs also spend time nerfing and buffing things to keep everything somewhat balanced within a standard deviation so there is no real pay to win feel. Sure you can buy a shiny new vauban ( I ended up buying a small sum of platinum to support the game, used it to buy a vauban a while after) but It won't make you a better player (I was already premium with just an excalibur). Most F2P games will give you outrageously overpowered characters/objects/buffs/armor/whatever compared to what is available for free. Minus the orokin reactors and catalysts which can be bought for platinum at anytime but only won for free during randomly specified times, there is nothing along those lines in this game. This game also doesn't shove advertisements up your rectum like a suppository around every corner (hopefully it stays that way : ) ). What can be purchased with platinum is not necessiary for the game. Sure weapon slots and warframe slots are nice, we don't have to chose what stays in our inventories and what has to be removed to get the next new item. Lets face it we grind insanely to *@##$slap the RNG system and get the components needed for our builds and it sucks having to toss it later to make room for a new item to get master points. However this is no limit to how many warframes/weapons we can use or build without having to pay, just how many we can keep at once. On top of that is we can build anything in the game without having to pay out of pocket (just out of our social lives ;) ).

The one thing which is disagreeable about the platinum is the market costs. 450 platinum for $ 30 USD (not counting bonus platinum, since it is bonus, extra, not part of the cost). So:

1 Platinum = 1/15 a dollar
or
1 plat = 6 cents
or
1 dollar = 15 plat

Which is fine, every currency needs a relative value compared to other currencies. What matters is its purchasing power. 1 Dollar gets you a cola from a vending machine, 100 yen gets you the same cola from a vending machine in japan [so regardless if you spent 1 USD or 100 JPY its relative value has the same purchasing power in regards to cola] so here is the thing ... we want to speed up a build for a weapon we spent 2 days getting the parts for, its 30 plat, $2, reasonable. An orokin reactor is worth a little more than $1 do, cool. 2 weapons slot costs less than a single dollar, sweet. But wait, oh fcuk...fcuking hell...350 for frost?? That is like $20 ...What that machine gun over there is 225 plat? That is like $14 -_- The cost for platinum is reasonable...the problem is it's purchasing power is underwhelming, to put it nicely. One could argue, well utility equipment and miscellaneous things are cheaper and useful items are cheaper and warframes and weapons cost more so people don't buy the whole game in one sitting. Yeah okay, that seems plausible but so does saying "Waiting for a potato alert is fine, the mission is easy, I can get and build that reactor/catalyst with ease, however getting the x1000 resources and bp drops to build a warframe is much more tedious, I'm just going to buy [insert frame name] with plat since the systems bp isn't dropping, hey wait I see that did they did there". We appreciate and understand the development team needs that Aston Martin money, we all do, but please lower the platinum costs in the market before we suspect you all of masterminding several high profile ponzi schemes and probably being the people behind a series of emails from a dethroned Nigerian prince...

Edited June 15, 2013 by Sobezilla

[DeatH-ReapeR]

Dont buy platinium if you don't want to -.-

The warframes that cost that much, got orokin catalyst/reactor with it so reduce that from the Price since that is extra, reduce the waiting time after getting all the ressources and the Price is very Little.

 

You can always just buy the frost blueprint or the vauban blueprint or whatever in the shop, for credits wich you farm in-game

[TisEric]

15-20 dollars for 1 warframe is not a MICRO transaction.

 

Micro means small which means  0 - 3 dollars at most. 

[Sobezilla]

Well microtransaction is the general term for premium currency transactions i thought, my bad if that was wrong

[captainsweatpants]

They could do with reducing the cost of some of the weapons or frames. like putting a max price of 250 platinum for the newer ones, and lower the cost of the old ones after a while, like maybe 15% -20% after a month or half a month.

[AbathurX]

This again. 

You need to end your rant with a  conclusion, I dont get your point but it mostly is : "Blah blah Premium is good but at the same time, its expensive"

Consider the following :
 

1) This is beta, 

 

2) The P price is rasonable, people who want to spend it in the things they want (as WFs) is up to them. Thinking is something good too.

 

3) I am sorry if I am wrong but you seem like someone who is too used to these new games "Play 1 day get everything OP" "Pay money, get insta OP"
3a) This game is great as it is, playing missions throught the system which has the resource I need is enough to build what I want, First set your goals, then go for them.

 

4) I havent bought any P YET , I have played WF for 3 weeks so far, great game, planning to spend because I want to support and want to get some necessary things (nothing end game yet)

 

5) And finally, I think you need to know that right now buying P is the only way to help WF to improve and to survive,( hence the BECOME A FOUNDER, HELP SHAPE THE FUTURE OF WARFRAME, maybe some kind souls could invest good money on this 250 dollars is always nice)  since this game is still under development, which means they need money for either their workers, servers, time spent and maybe earning something. I think complaining about a game that is still emerging is rude and unnecessary, its not (yet) that popular as WOAH or DOTO or any other game (yes those names were on purpose).

 

Sorry about my english too, Not my best.

[ValhaHazred]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/65550-sales-on-market-items/

I think weekly sales would solve any problems fairly nicely.

[Mietz]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/35324-understanding-monetization-and-microtransactions-an-evaluation/#entry326473

[matrixEXO]

15-20 dollars for 1 warframe is not a MICRO transaction.

 

Micro means small which means  0 - 3 dollars at most. 

I would say around 99 cents up to 5 dollars max though. That's also the category where color packs are at, microtransaction.

Edited June 16, 2013 by matrixEXO

[Mecron]

If platinium was cheaper and available through SMS or paysafecard, I would buy it. Maybe in countries where you earn euro it isn't much but anywhere else it's.