Paragon Market prices
That's often true in other microtransaction systems, Seldom, but clearly less so in the paragon market. Most such systems do not have a conversion rate as easy as "cents are 125% of points," and this is the first microtransaction system I have ever seen that sells virtually everything for multiples of twenty five cents. You'd have to go out of your way to end up with an unusable quantity of "change" in the paragon market.
In regards to the enhancement inventory pricing, it's my personal opinion that no single item should cost more than the price of a monthly sub. The point stipend for VIP's does alleviate some of that concern for me, but I still find it a little off-putting there are individual items that actually cost more than a month's access to the game.
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Was comparing notes with a couple of friends on pricing.
What we concluded is that the current prices vary from way too high to really cheap depending on:
* What aspects of the game you spend the most time with
* What your income and available cash are like
* Things like that
Basically, those factors dominate. I got both enhancement tray unlocks on both accounts, because I do a lot of shuffling of stuff wherein being able to move 20+ enhancements at a time is really convenient to me, and saves me other kinds of time and hassle. I only got one each salvage/auction/recipe storage increases, because those numbers are already pretty livable. Now that I have the equivalents of vet rewards from the points I picked up to get those things.
Power set prices? Fine by me. Costume/part/etc prices? Prices are fine, lack of bundling is annoying. I really want the option of buying something roughly equivalent to The Mutant Pack all at once. Otherwise it's just so many things to keep track of, a problem massively amplified by the store listing things you already have.
The special deal on server transfer tokens is awesome when you realize that 480 points buys you three character renames.
But yeah. For an active marketeer with serious short-term memory problems and sufficient income, enhancement trays are cheap. For someone who doesn't marketeer, has a really good memory, and has to survive on a smallish fixed income, they're ludicrously overpriced.
What I would suggest ncsoft do, if they want to maximize revenue, is a Rotating Sale. There's a company ("The Learning Company") who sell video and audio courses on various topics, and they do this; absolutely everything they sell is on sale at 50% or more off at least once per year. People who really want a given thing will buy it, people who can't afford that price will wait for the sale. ncsoft could do the same kind of thing; make sure everything goes on sale occasionally, so people who are really strapped for cash will still buy stuff eventually, but for people who have the money, it won't be worth waiting.
The idea isn't for you to drop hundreds of dollars on the store today. (Though if you want to, I'm almost certain they won't object!) The idea is that each month, you'll drop a few bucks here and there that, added with the allotment you get with your VIP subscription, will allow you to slowly build up your inventory of acquired stuff.
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For instance prior to Issue 21 I had saved up well over 30 costumes ready to go as soon as I got the extra slots for my main characters. When I bought the "five slots" yesterday I loaded all those costumes on all those multiple characters. So my effective "cost per extra costume slot" is now well under $2 at this point and it'll only get less as time goes on.
When you factor in the potential benefit for ALL of your characters, not just the "five slots", the cost was much more justifiable to me. YMMV of course.
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How is it more useful than 5 enhancements? Recipes can be converted into enhancements. If anything, enhancements are more valuable, because they contain the value of the salvage and crafting cost as well, and often sell for even more than the sum of it all on the market.
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If it helps, the costume slot unlocks and the storage unlocks are *global*.
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I'm not going to compare the two markets, but it seems like Paragon Studios is shooting themselves in the foot with these prices.
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I suggest that you take a look at your competitor's prices... The points are the same $1 = 80 points, yet their global costume slots work out to 1/4 of the price in this game (450 points for 2 global costume slots vs 800 points for one global costume slot).
I'm not going to compare the two markets, but it seems like Paragon Studios is shooting themselves in the foot with these prices. |
I won't argue that this game's price point per costume slot is probably a bit too high, but then again I'll probably get far more value for my dollar here than I did there.
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Yes I might agree that when you just say "5 costume slots for $50" it does sound a little expensive. But I think you have to legitimately factor in how many total extra slots you're going to be able to use across an entire account.
For instance prior to Issue 21 I had saved up well over 30 costumes ready to go as soon as I got the extra slots for my main characters. When I bought the "five slots" yesterday I loaded all those costumes on all those multiple characters. So my effective "cost per extra costume slot" is now well under $2 at this point and it'll only get less as time goes on. When you factor in the potential benefit for ALL of your characters, not just the "five slots", the cost was much more justifiable to me. YMMV of course. |
Me personally, I'm going to wait until the additional costume slots drop in price. I *might* pay $25 for an additional five slots but no way in hell am I paying $50. Whether folks can afford it or not, thats a ludicrous amount to pay for a 7 year old QoL feature that took little to no effort to upgrade from 5 slots to 10. No offense to anyone that already paid too much for a pre-existing feature that was very easy to replicate.
At the same time, is one costume slot for $10 getting the same bang for your buck if you spent $10 on one booster pack pre-I21? Yes and no. More time and effort goes into creating all-new costume and emote content for one set than it does to alter the five-slot interface already in game to now accommodate ten.
Me personally, I'm going to wait until the additional costume slots drop in price. I *might* pay $25 for an additional five slots but no way in hell am I paying $50. Whether folks can afford it or not, thats a ludicrous amount to pay for a 7 year old QoL feature that took little to no effort to upgrade from 5 slots to 10. No offense to anyone that already paid too much for a pre-existing feature that was very easy to replicate. |
I've literally waited for years to get more costume slots on my characters. This was far from an "impulse buy" for me. I played this game for several years even before they gave us the costume save/load feature so switching costumes before that was an absolute chore. Basically I look at how much time I've spent switching costumes in and out over the years and the potential for playing this game for a few more years at least. To me the $50 was justifiable on several levels.
But all joking aside if you want to worry about this from the point of view of how much "Dev blood, sweat and tears" your money is paying for then I would never put much stock in these costume slots. If that's your only metric for deciding to buy these things then I would hardly think they were worth 25 cents much less 25 dollars.
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I suggest that you take a look at your competitor's prices... The points are the same $1 = 80 points, yet their global costume slots work out to 1/4 of the price in this game (450 points for 2 global costume slots vs 800 points for one global costume slot).
I'm not going to compare the two markets, but it seems like Paragon Studios is shooting themselves in the foot with these prices. |
That WILL eventually reach a plateau and new revenue will fall right off a cliff.
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Fully agreed. Between the pricing being all over the map and the reliance on "global" as a catch phrase, I can't see any way the market will be profitable over the long term. There's little nickle-and-diming in Paragon's plan, which is the bread and butter of a microtransaction model. There's just "pay a higher amount now, and it's yours on that account forever".
That WILL eventually reach a plateau and new revenue will fall right off a cliff. |
I honestly feel bad for Paragon Studios. They've put out one of their best updates ever, but the actions of their owners over them are just going to sink the population base.
I suggest that you take a look at your competitor's prices... The points are the same $1 = 80 points, yet their global costume slots work out to 1/4 of the price in this game (450 points for 2 global costume slots vs 800 points for one global costume slot).
I'm not going to compare the two markets, but it seems like Paragon Studios is shooting themselves in the foot with these prices. |
16 servers with 12 basic character slots. That's 192 characters.
Now 5 global costume slots costs $50 bucks.
That means I'm getting 960 costume slots for roughly $.05 cents a slot.
OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!!!
Five frickin cents a slot! What the hell is wrong with the devs? It's criminal I tell ya!!!
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Fully agreed. Between the pricing being all over the map and the reliance on "global" as a catch phrase, I can't see any way the market will be profitable over the long term. There's little nickle-and-diming in Paragon's plan, which is the bread and butter of a microtransaction model. There's just "pay a higher amount now, and it's yours on that account forever".
That WILL eventually reach a plateau and new revenue will fall right off a cliff. |
But even if they do lower these to like half the current price or less at some point I won't really be all that upset about it. As of this very second I'm enjoying having characters with 10 costumes and if someone else gets to do that in a few months for half the price I did then more power to them!
I've enjoyed playing this game pretty much constantly for 7.5 years now. I can't imagine a better bargain for my entertainment dollar than this game has been. If I effectively just gave the Devs a $25 "tip" for a job well done then I think I can live with that.
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Yeah let's do the math on that.
16 servers with 12 basic character slots. That's 192 characters. Now 5 global costume slots costs $50 bucks. That means I'm getting 960 costume slots for roughly $.05 cents a slot. OH MY GOD WE'RE BEING RIPPED OFF!!! Five frickin cents a slot! What the hell is wrong with the devs? It's criminal I tell ya!!! ![]() |
*edit* Nevermind, they do have individual purchases. Foot: meet mouth.
They're counting on a fresh flow of "new" content to keep from hitting that plateau... but the current prices simply show that NCSoft still hasn't learned how MICROtransactions work.
I honestly feel bad for Paragon Studios. They've put out one of their best updates ever, but the actions of their owners over them are just going to sink the population base. |
Clearly these introductory prices are set high at first to get the people who are willing to pay "too much" for things to buy first. Then when the sales do drop off (and trust me they will) only then will they lower the prices to get the holdouts to buy. The net effect, over the long haul, will end up being MORE money for Paragon, not less.
It's brilliant, at least for their corporate profits that is.
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This assumes the slots are needed, used, and/or desired for every possible slot. They are not. Many have far fewer characters per server, and not all characters 'need' extra slots. From personal experience, I have around 10 characters that could use the spare costume slot. The developers would've done themselves a favor by selling individual slots, as that would be a more 'longterm' money source. As it is, they're pulling a US post office and charging 50 bucks for a forever stamp. Big money up front, longterm revenue comes up short, customers get sticker shock.
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I play on one server. The other 15 servers are irrelevant to me. Just giving you the mindset of a paying customer.
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Edit: Oh and as paying customers we can simply save up our free points and get them for nothing if we're that short on cash.
This assumes the slots are needed, used, and/or desired for every possible slot. They are not. Many have far fewer characters per server, and not all characters 'need' extra slots. From personal experience, I have around 10 characters that could use the spare costume slot. The developers would've done themselves a favor by selling individual slots, as that would be a more 'longterm' money source. As it is, they're pulling a US post office and charging 50 bucks for a forever stamp. Big money up front, longterm revenue comes up short, customers get sticker shock.
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The costume pieces individual and ala carte? Are perfect. I happily dropped 15 dollars today to unlock what seemed like dozens of pieces that I was missing without having to buy the full 10$ pack before for the other pieces I DIDN'T want. This was awesome.
BTW, I agree that VIP point costs should be lower than what free players pay. Either that or double the monthly allotment of points VIPs earn. The way it is now is deeply troubling.