Dev Chat Highlights, August 4: Paragon Market

Ditto.

The Paragon Market is being built to cater to people who do not want/need everything, because that will be the majority of players. Not the vast majority, but the majority nonetheless. For example: I have very little interest in the Steampunk pack, save for the Victorian Aura, so I did not purchase it. However, I am looking forward to having to spend less money and just get the particular item I want.

Yes, I agree, the fact that buying the "Steampunk Bundle" (or whatever it will be called in the Paragon Market) will cost more there than it would to buy it now is upsetting. But in my mind, as long as they are churning out more costumes/auras/power sets/mission arcs/etc. faster and in greater amounts, I am fine with picking and choosing what I will buy within my budget, and acknowledging the fact that I will not be able to have everything right away.

Sad to say, that's the way a la carte purchasing works. Think of the Booster as an "economy size" costume/emote/power bundle, the virtual equivalent of buying in bulk from a price club. CoH Freedom's Paragon Market, on the other hand, is more of a boutique. The former works out well when there's a sufficently large and stable population; the latter for a fluctuating one, both in terms of size and commitment. Since F2P players provide less reliable income streams than paying subscribers, breaking up the bulk items (whether Booster packs or expansions) and lowering the individual elements' price points is the best strategy for making money off them.

The penalty for getting to buy the exact a la carte items we want is that buying them all will cost more. They are banking (literally) on the idea that the people who end up spending more will cover some of the cost of people who are going to spend less. Basically we get more purchase options while at the same time the company keeps making the same average amount of money. It's deviously brilliant.

This, pretty much. Though the initial impression I got when this whole thing was announced was to not buy any more boosters. Only one left of any real interest to me is the Animal Pack, and, well, the thread here has answered my question about what to do there.

And yeah, my guess is that the Booster bundle model will be gone. Now, in theory, a single "piece" or set can be released when it's done. They don't need to wait for other things to bundle it up with to release as a pack.

If given an option to buy the pack via ala carte, I would only buy what I would want. If given the option to buy the pack as a whole, I would buy the pack.

And I suspect that if you totaled those two options (buying only what you want via a la carte and buying a full pack) that on average the cost of those things will be about the same. Yes technically that means we're getting less for our money than we used to. But on the other hand you're theoretically not using those things you didn't want anyway right? Did you really lose out on something you're not using?

Ultimately this new scheme gives us more options while preserving maximum profitability for the company. Seems pretty clear cut to me.

Hmm. HMM.

... Ah, who I am kidding, I don't have that kind of money laying around.

Your money will actually go further, if you keep subscribing, thanks to the monthly extra PP.

Old model:

In one year you'll spend $15 * 12 and buy, say, 4 boosters (4 * 10) = $220

You'll recieved a years playing the game and 4 booster packs worth of stuff.

New Model:

In one year you'll spend $15 * 12 = $180
You'll recieve a years playing the game and $60 worth of PP, which will buy you about 4 booster packs worth of stuff.

You get the same amount for $40 less. You can use that $40 to buy 4 powersets (or 2 and a bit extra booster packs worth of stuff), meaning you get more for your money.


That is obviously assuming the Devs keep to their word about VIP players getting at least as much new stuff included in their subscription as they do now.

Google does. They should walk down the street and make that offer to them so that Google employees will have their own private server.

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I strongly suspect that this will happen. I'd think that we will be seeing "bundles" of items at a discount so that if you want to buy several things that roughly equaled a "booster pack" in the past, it won't be more expensive.

It will be cheaper for me.

If I look back at the all the packs I've bought (all of them except the emote one), I notice that I currently only use 3 costume change emotes, none of the regular emotes (most of them are really well done and they're fun for goofing around but really, how often do you *use* them?) and 2 'powers' (ninja, size change). And most of the costume parts on one charcter or another of course.

If I add all that up using the current PP prices I'd have been off cheaper picking and choosing instead of paying €8.99 for the full pack.

That being said, I don't regret buying any of the packs.

Expect that there will be discounted bundles at some point as well as limited time sales on various items. One of the market screenshots that's floating around shows a dual inspiration being "on sale for the next 18 hours".

This exactly why the "standard" prices for buying all the items of a previous Booster Pack are going to cost more than they do now.

During the times a sale is -not- going on a few people will buy them anyway. This means more money to the Devs. Then the Devs can have a sale which "lowers" price making people even more likely to buy. Of course the trick of that is that the "lowered" price is actually roughly around the SAME price they are paying now. The net effect is that the Devs will either get more money for the old pack or the same amount for them. That's pretty much a win-win for the company.

In that case 'one day' will be the time that I buy them.

I have a problem with it. Why can't we buy the same pack in the Paragon Market as we can in the NCSoft Store? For example, what's to prevent them from putting Science Super Booster in the Paragon Market for 800 Points ($10)? They gave us the ability to make our purchases more granular, but at the same time are taking away bundled discounts? Whaaaaat?

Trust me, you aren't the only one that head-tilted at that.

Naturally an all-around excellent Booster Pack such as the Steampunk one was a no-brainer as a purchase for me. The Animal one is conceptually unappealing to me (come on, not even a Monkey headpiece?), so picking up one or two of its emotes from the Paragon Market makes perfect sense. In between those, the Mutant one has a few costume elements that I've seen put to very creative use, even though the overall costume design is not to my taste, so the question becomes whether or not to stock up in case the other features might come in handy (I don't think I want the organic sword now, but it's possible that in the future I might come up with a costume concept where it would fit perfectly).

Estimating distribution on a power law graph to determine the median, in this case for players' purchase totals across the population, is a tricky business, but that's not really the issue. On one hand, there are the proponents of the new "Long Tail" model that suggest a large enough population can provide a nice income for a business if there's enough variety. On the other, there's the conventional Pareto Principle that states, to broadly simplify, that a minority of the population is responsible for the majority of the results. The beauty of an a la carte marketplace is that while it's better suited for the former than a bulk sale venue, it makes a ton of money in the latter model as well (essentially, big spenders wind up spending even more).

The real test will be how many players CoH Freedom attracts. If a massive influx of new F2Pers wind up buying a few items here and there, then the Long Tail may hold true. If the population shakes down to VIPers and returning Premiums, then the Paragon Market will cater to them according to a Pareto split.

I do that. I've still got the Large Red on all bar about 6 of my 50's

I've never managed to keep the Large Green past about level 27 though.

Me too.

I expected that buying the Booster Packs piece by piece over time would cost more. I thought however, buying them as a bundle package would cost the same as always.

However, I've bought all the boosters so this doesn't really effect me. For all we know, this will be the end of theme packs, and now they'll just release new costumes bits on the market.