Paragon Market prices
By
Alexander_Drako,
Posted on: 2011-09-14 10:27 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Originally Posted by Lothic
FYI the slots -are- being sold individually. People here are just throwing around the "5 for $50" phrase because they want them all at once.
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Clearly I have not rummaged through the store thing enough yet. My apologies.
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If you are willing to put up the money to max out my character slots on all 16 servers for me, I'll grant you the $0.05 / slot.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
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!!!  |
As it is I play, at most, 5 characters regularly.
My comparison was apples to apples: Global Costume Slots in one game vs Global Costume Slots in another. In one game the cost per character slot is 225 points for a global costume slot. In the other game it is 800 points for a global costume slot. Ok, game 1's purchase is 2 costume slots (can be bought more times than game 2's, by the way) is 450 points vs 1,600 points for 2 costume slots in game 2.
Given that both are charging $1 per 80 points, that is a fair comparison to see relative value: game 1 is charging $5.63 for two global costume slots while game 2 is charging $20.
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Seldom:
Costume slots are 800 PP ($10) per costume slot. The only way to spend $50 is to buy all 5 slots.
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It comes down to priorities. What's more important to you, a power set or an extra costume slot, or more enhancement trays. Each of us will have different things we want first. Nothing right or wrong with that.|
Originally Posted by Clouded
But I already have to save up my point for powersets? So which is it?
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I'm sure some players look at the price of the enhancement trays as a bargain when they compare it to the cost of respecs they go thru when they strip a build of all it's enhancements.
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| EDIT: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the overall argument. I just wanted to kill some time. So nyah. |
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Likewise.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
If you are willing to put up the money to max out my character slots on all 16 servers for me, I'll grant you the $0.05 / slot.
As it is I play, at most, 5 characters regularly. My comparison was apples to apples: Global Costume Slots in one game vs Global Costume Slots in another. In one game the cost per character slot is 225 points for a global costume slot. In the other game it is 800 points for a global costume slot. Ok, game 1's purchase is 2 costume slots (can be bought more times than game 2's, by the way) is 450 points vs 1,600 points for 2 costume slots in game 2. Given that both are charging $1 per 80 points, that is a fair comparison to see relative value: game 1 is charging $5.63 for two global costume slots while game 2 is charging $20. ======== Seldom: Costume slots are 800 PP ($10) per costume slot. The only way to spend $50 is to buy all 5 slots. |
I do not use all 15 servers. I play one two servers mostly. Maybe play 5-6 characters actively. Not all of those would be intrested in having more costume slots.
I'd be far more intrested if they added a per character basis, for like... $0.50 per slot. which is 10x the current price atm.
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Don't really care what other games charge, and the fact that you don't play more than half a dozen characters doesn't change the fact that you have dozens of character slots available to use.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
If you are willing to put up the money to max out my character slots on all 16 servers for me, I'll grant you the $0.05 / slot.
As it is I play, at most, 5 characters regularly. My comparison was apples to apples: Global Costume Slots in one game vs Global Costume Slots in another. In one game the cost per character slot is 225 points for a global costume slot. In the other game it is 800 points for a global costume slot. Ok, game 1's purchase is 2 costume slots (can be bought more times than game 2's, by the way) is 450 points vs 1,600 points for 2 costume slots in game 2. Given that both are charging $1 per 80 points, that is a fair comparison to see relative value: game 1 is charging $5.63 for two global costume slots while game 2 is charging $20. ======== Seldom: Costume slots are 800 PP ($10) per costume slot. The only way to spend $50 is to buy all 5 slots. |
This is no different than paying for cable tv. Just because you only watch 5 or 6 channels doesn't mean you'll only get charged for those specific channels. You still pay for all the others even tho you don't use them.
And unlike cable TV these are one time purchases.
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This is the most glaring area of disparity between the two markets.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
If you are willing to put up the money to max out my character slots on all 16 servers for me, I'll grant you the $0.05 / slot.
As it is I play, at most, 5 characters regularly. My comparison was apples to apples: Global Costume Slots in one game vs Global Costume Slots in another. In one game the cost per character slot is 225 points for a global costume slot. In the other game it is 800 points for a global costume slot. Ok, game 1's purchase is 2 costume slots (can be bought more times than game 2's, by the way) is 450 points vs 1,600 points for 2 costume slots in game 2. Given that both are charging $1 per 80 points, that is a fair comparison to see relative value: game 1 is charging $5.63 for two global costume slots while game 2 is charging $20. ======== Seldom: Costume slots are 800 PP ($10) per costume slot. The only way to spend $50 is to buy all 5 slots. |
Another area is character renames. CoH is the standard 800 points. In the other market, it's 280 points. $10 vs. $3.5 There is one I'd be willing to pay, one I wouldn't.
Costume sets are actually pretty close, 400 vs 380.
'you get 400 points a month, save those!' Sure, fine, fair enough. Except that other place also gives it's subscribers 400 a month. You could actually buy a rename token with the cost of your sub and still have a little left over for some costume pieces.
Regarding the power set pricing: Looking at it from a non-subscriber position, if I want to buy the Widow Archetype, that is 1000 points, and that comes with two power sets. If I want to buy Beam Rifle outside of a sale, it's 800, for a single power set.
Now I had made my choice in hero games, and clearly I'm here and not there, so I'm not comparing anything other than the cost of the two markets. I know there's no rule saying you have to be the same price or lower than your competitors, especially if you feel you offer more content. I will say for myself, being -that- far out of whack is questionable, and it certainly makes my 400 points a month seem fairly paltry, compared to what it would buy elsewhere.
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So go to the suggestion forums and suggest they add the option to buy individual costume slots per character. Then you can buy them for a specific character and other people can buy them for their account.
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Originally Posted by Sapphic_Neko
Likewise.
I do not use all 15 servers. I play one two servers mostly. Maybe play 5-6 characters actively. Not all of those would be intrested in having more costume slots. I'd be far more intrested if they added a per character basis, for like... $0.50 per slot. which is 10x the current price atm. |
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I realize this, and phrased badly. My point was simply that the global slots don't present a value except to the few that have characters on manymany servers and wish for even more costumes on many of those.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
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Seldom: Costume slots are 800 PP ($10) per costume slot. The only way to spend $50 is to buy all 5 slots. |
It was also that the devs would be better off with single bonus slot purchases, over which I eat crow as it was pointed out they do already. Doh!
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Originally Posted by Sapphic_Neko
I'd be far more intrested if they added a per character basis, for like... $0.50 per slot. which is 10x the current price atm.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
So go to the suggestion forums and suggest they add the option to buy individual costume slots per character. Then you can buy them for a specific character and other people can buy them for their account.
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But even if they were like $0.50 a slot like Sapphic_Neko suggested I'd question it from the point of view of "what happens when I want to delete that character?" If I had a character with 5 slots like that then deleting the character would mean I'd permanently lose $2.50 I spent on it. I highly doubt they'd let you "recycle" those slots to another character.
Simply put the "buying costume slots globally" method is far simpler to deal with for everyone Dev and player alike.
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I love how people keep trying to compare things to that other game company which has been such an overwhelming success (They lost $7.5 million) the only way the parent company could turn a profit this year was by dumping it on someone else.
I am wondering... I see that some boosters are effectively more expensive now...
I see that Super Science is worth 5 bucks(400 points), ok, that is less than the booster, but the Super Tailor function is now 10 bucks(800 points). And we are not taking into consideration the fact that the costume pack doesnt seem to point out anywhere it has the emotes and costume changes(which are 80 points if I remember correctly). Effectively making the pack over 15 bucks versus the original 9.99 it used to cost when it came out.
I have been very supportive with the design of the new system, and I can even understand the heavily priced Costume Slots and the even more heavily priced Enhancement Trays.... But didnt the devs say "we start high so we can lower later and not have an outcry"? By asking for more for everything in the science pack they are doing exactly what they said they wouldnt do.*shrugs* Just my two cents.
Now, if the Super Science bundle has the super tailor and the emotes for the 400 points(which is not said anywhere on the store) I'll gladly shut up and apologize,but that doesnt seem to be the case.
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In fairness, those losses appear from analysis to be due to their development costs incurred for upcoming titles; both of their games appear to be incrementally profitable to at least some degree. Also, their F2P conversion numbers wouldn't be in those financial numbers to any significant degree.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I love how people keep trying to compare things to that other game company which has been such an overwhelming success (They lost $7.5 million) the only way the parent company could turn a profit this year was by dumping it on someone else.
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I'm more inclined to think comparisons aren't fair when they don't factor in very important situational differences. For example, our slots are more expensive than theirs are, but we get more of them for free than they do. That's not an inconsequential difference, and it plagues most comparisons for most things between the games out of context.
Because the games are so different in how they offer what they offer across their tiers of play, "simple" comparisons tend to be anything but.
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While this would be nice for us, it's simply not realistic. Almost every solely subscription game (not that there are many left now, 90% of the ones I've played or know about have gone to a Hybrid Model) also have microtransactions, if you choose to take part in them. Heck even most non-sub single player games do this now. It's just a fact of the games industry these days.|
Originally Posted by ArwenDarkblade
A game that has subscribers and free players should never charge subscribers above and beyond their subscription for anything. |
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Originally Posted by Lothic
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. |
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Originally Posted by Lothic
It's actually fairly obvious that Paragon has set their prices (for these costume slots in particular) to be just about as high as anyone could reasonably tolerate and I think it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll come down at "some" point. Will that point be tomorrow or six months from now is anyone's guess.
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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Originally Posted by Clouded
But I already have to save up my point for powersets? So which is it? |
"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."
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Yeah, that. And dumping it on a well-known foreign power, no less, too.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I love how people keep trying to compare things to that other game company which has been such an overwhelming success (They lost $7.5 million) the only way the parent company could turn a profit this year was by dumping it on someone else.
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"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."
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It means that your $0.05/costume is a meaningless red herring. Your value for the costume slots also completely disregards Premium users. Two global character slots. So those extra costume slots are now $5 per costume slot.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Don't really care what other games charge, and the fact that you don't play more than half a dozen characters doesn't change the fact that you have dozens of character slots available to use.
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The value of the costume slot is between $10 and $0.05 depending on how many characters you use. If someone actually HAS 980 characters (or more), then the last thing they are probably worrying about is the cost of costume slots.
Again, if you want to argue the theoretical limit, pony up the money for me to unlock said character slots. If not, then your numbers are false.
Your comparison between this game and cable tv packages has nothing to do with this discussion. So I'm going to completely ignore the rest of your post.
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The mystery of why I21 is so awesome, except that the Paragon Market is broken beyond my capacity to express in words, just stopped being a mystery.|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We are still working on a way to filter past purchases, however there's some snags with how the database plays with individual items, past purchases and bundles. It's a known request and something we're working with our partners to figure out.
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I kid you not, I read the Daily WTF regularly, and I have been jaw-droppingly amazed by the Paragon Market several times.
Wait, the market coding was farmed out? If so, you guys got ripped off.
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Uh.|
Originally Posted by Emberly
Wait, the market coding was farmed out? If so, you guys got ripped off.
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Do you remember the ncsoft online store?
I don't think this was "farmed out" in the sense of "subcontractor". I think ncsoft itself is the culprit. Look at the commonalities.
ncsoft launcher: hilariously awful with nested failures and incoherence
ncsoft online store: famously unusable and a major source of newbie questions
paragon market: has reduced me to helpless tears of laughter repeatedly
All the people I know who play ncsoft games have the experience that the game developers are pretty decent, but any time you interact with ncsoft corporate, it's awful.
I see no reason to expect this one to be different.
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That's the only reason that i'm not saying they're a total ripoff. If it were per character? I'd line up with pitchforks and torches.|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
If it helps, the costume slot unlocks and the storage unlocks are *global*.
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As it is now, I see myself more purchasing one at a time when I feel like I have the spare cash to drop. It feels like a bigger deal purchasing one, if that makes sense. Being they're account wide? Helps a lot. But you still won't see me lining up to throw 50 dollars all at once at you guys. 50 dollars is a lot of money
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pretty much what Lothic said , im very happy with my purchases and im fine with paying the "have it nao !! " prices annnd when stuff comes down in price or someone gets it on sale im going to smile and be happy for them .
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Originally Posted by Lothic
It's actually fairly obvious that Paragon has set their prices (for these costume slots in particular) to be just about as high as anyone could reasonably tolerate and I think it's pretty much guaranteed that they'll come down at "some" point. Will that point be tomorrow or six months from now is anyone's guess.
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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I've never understood the purpose of that power...
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Originally Posted by Placta
Shadowy Presence was 200 on Beta, and is now 60. That's still 60 too many, but it's come down.
That's the only one I noticed, but I otherwise only really looked at the ones I was going to buy. |
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I agree. These things need to be priced at a level that I'll buy them on an impulse. If it costs $5 more than a month of playing the game, it stops me cold. It will just make me wait and save my points from my monthly allotment instead of spending it right now. Which means I might be waiting several months if I buy some other cheaper stuff in the meantime. In the long haul, I'll wind up spending less.|
Originally Posted by FullMoonRising
But you still won't see me lining up to throw 50 dollars all at once at you guys. 50 dollars is a lot of money
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Most consumers have a threshold where they tell themselves, "Heck, that's so cheap I can't afford not to buy it." You want all your items in this model to fall into that price range.
For example, that's how I bought the Steampunk bundle on day 1 of Freedom. And when I come up with a character for the Barbarian costume set, I'll buy the whole thing even though I might only use a few of the items out of it. Because, hey, it's so cheap I can't afford not to buy it. The same thing was true when they had the sale on the Science pack -- too cheap to pass up, and I had to buy it.
For me, 400-800 points is in that magic impulse range.
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Arcana speaks the truth. My argument against buying costume slots (for myself) is half that it costs TWENTY ******* DOLLARS and half that I rarely have use of all five that I get for free. Justifying spending $20 on more slots I most likely won't need is difficult, to say the least. Same with enhancement, salvage and recipe slots - I don't hoard, so inventory size only determines how frequently I have to sell, and it ain't all that frequent now, especially when Trainings and DOs stop dropping.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm more inclined to think comparisons aren't fair when they don't factor in very important situational differences. For example, our slots are more expensive than theirs are, but we get more of them for free than they do. That's not an inconsequential difference, and it plagues most comparisons for most things between the games out of context.
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These services are expensive, but we have very expansive cheap alternatives already in the game.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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No it's not. Regardless of how much you deny it your subscription gets you a minimum of 12 characters on 16 servers.|
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
It means that your $0.05/costume is a meaningless red herring.
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| Your value for the costume slots also completely disregards Premium users. |
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| If someone actually HAS 980 characters (or more), then the last thing they are probably worrying about is the cost of costume slots. |
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| Again, if you want to argue the theoretical limit, pony up the money for me to unlock said character slots. If not, then your numbers are false. |
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| Your comparison between this game and cable tv packages has nothing to do with this discussion. So I'm going to completely ignore the rest of your post. |
EDIT: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the overall argument. I just wanted to kill some time. So nyah.