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Because everyone has learned that as Microsoft proved with Xbox Live that disconnecting Points from Pounds makes people spend more of them because it's harder to keep track of how much money you're actually spending. It's the same reason that you can only buy points in chunks that are almost entirely incongruous with the number of points that anything costs, so that you always have just too few or too many (leading to too few next time) points for what you want so you have to buy another chunk of too many or too few points.
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Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I wondered how much a costume slot cost in the store, and was a bit taken aback to find it was (on sale) at 600 points. I was like 'HOW much??!'. Then when I worked it out at around 8 dollars, my reaction changed to 'oh, that's not a lot, really'.
If they'd have made 1 dollar equal to 1 point, I wouldn't have been initially unimpressed. 600 ppints sounds like a lot more than 8 dollars to me. Eco |
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Indeed. This is the reason why I will never buy Paragon Points or any other type of 'pretend money' like this.
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Originally Posted by The_Spad_EU
Because everyone has learned that as Microsoft proved with Xbox Live that disconnecting Points from Pounds makes people spend more of them because it's harder to keep track of how much money you're actually spending. It's the same reason that you can only buy points in chunks that are almost entirely incongruous with the number of points that anything costs, so that you always have just too few or too many (leading to too few next time) points for what you want so you have to buy another chunk of too many or too few points.
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Or... you stay aware of cost and have some discipline and be a smart shopper.
At 400 PP = $5USD, then 1 Point = 1.25 cents. So, 800 points for a costume slot is $10.
But, buying points in bulk, you save 20%, which makes 1 Point = 1.0 cents.
And then you wait for the sale where a costume slot is 600 points. Which means a costume slot was only $6 for me instead of $10.
Of course, each person has different resources and priorities. But if resources are tight, then you stay on top of actual cost, stick to a budget, and shop wisely.
Another cagey use of resources is to go Premium for one month and spend the $15 you would on a subscription on Points instead. You'll still get a Token for that month, and you'll get 1,200 Points to spend. All you have to give up is some VIP perks for one month.
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Precisely - it's the same reason (allegedly) hot dogs come in packs of ten and buns in packs of eight.
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Originally Posted by The_Spad_EU
It's the same reason that you can only buy points in chunks that are almost entirely incongruous with the number of points that anything costs, so that you always have just too few or too many (leading to too few next time) points for what you want so you have to buy another chunk of too many or too few points.
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I think the dollar/point thing backfires on me. I have no problem adding 25% to the points and making my buying decisions based on that number of cents. And I continue to do that even though I got a bulk discount on buying lots of points. The end result is that when making a decision on buying, I assume everything is going to cost me more than it actually does.
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I haven't looked to see how many points $15 would buy - does that include the 400 VIP points you'd lose?
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Another cagey use of resources is to go Premium for one month and spend the $15 you would on a subscription on Points instead. You'll still get a Token for that month, and you'll get 1,200 Points to spend. All you have to give up is some VIP perks for one month.
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No.
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Originally Posted by Sugar_Rush
I haven't looked to see how many points $15 would buy - does that include the 400 VIP points you'd lose?
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That should be 1.25 cents and 1 cent, respectively. You had me thinking for a minute, "That would be $80 for a costume slot. What is this, E** Online?" |
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
At 400 PP = $5USD, then 1 Point = 12.5 cents. So, 800 points for a costume slot is $10.
But, buying points in bulk, you save 20%, which makes 1 Point = 10 cents. |
I just usually do the conversion in my head, at 400 points for $5. 1000 points is two and a half times 400, so that would make whatever 2.5 x $5, or $10.00. So then I think, "Is this worth $10?"
The thing that catches me, though, isn't the dollar amount, it's the fact that a lot of this stuff (including costume slots) is account-wide and forever. I know that if I spend that $10 today, I will have that costume slot available on every character, past and future, from now on, even if I stop playing as a VIP. That tends to inflate the value of what I'm buying versus the money I'm spending in my head, and I'm more likely to be like, "Well, in that case, I'll go ahead and get it."
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Originally Posted by Spiked_Menace
Indeed. This is the reason why I will never buy Paragon Points or any other type of 'pretend money' like this.
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Originally Posted by rsclark
I think the dollar/point thing backfires on me. I have no problem adding 25% to the points and making my buying decisions based on that number of cents. And I continue to do that even though I got a bulk discount on buying lots of points. The end result is that when making a decision on buying, I assume everything is going to cost me more than it actually does.
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I factor in the cost of something like this to the relative long term use I expect to get out of it. Sure $10 (or even $8) for one costume slot for one character can be considered to be way too expensive for most people. But if what you're buying is an extra slot for DOZENS of characters that will be available anytime you want it for potentially YEARS into the future then all of a sudden that $10 doesn't seem too far fetched. At least that's how I see it. *shrugs*
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Originally Posted by TonyV
The thing that catches me, though, isn't the dollar amount, it's the fact that a lot of this stuff (including costume slots) is account-wide and forever. I know that if I spend that $10 today, I will have that costume slot available on every character, past and future, from now on, even if I stop playing as a VIP. That tends to inflate the value of what I'm buying versus the money I'm spending in my head, and I'm more likely to be like, "Well, in that case, I'll go ahead and get it."
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I agree; it's really not bad when you think about it like that. I have about 40 characters I play on two different servers. Even ignoring the current discount, and ignoring bulk-purchase bonuses/VIP stipends, and assuming I'll never make another new character for the remainder of my CoH "career" (fat chance), that still comes out to a quarter per costume slot.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
I factor in the cost of something like this to the relative long term use I expect to get out of it. Sure $10 (or even $8) for one costume slot for one character can be considered to be way too expensive for most people. But if what you're buying is an extra slot for DOZENS of characters that will be available anytime you want it for potentially YEARS into the future then all of a sudden that $10 doesn't seem too far fetched. At least that's how I see it. *shrugs*
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In my day, putting a quarter into a video game meant you got three lives, right now, and when it was over, it was over. And the only way to change the character's costume was to use the other joystick so you were the blue commando instead of the red one. You kids today, with your "costume slots" and your "Paragon points" and your "FREEM"...
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So I moved a decimal the wrong way. It's OK. I moved it the opposite way the in subsequent operation making it work out. That's how I roll!!!|
Originally Posted by TonyV
That should be 1.25 cents and 1 cent, respectively. You had me thinking for a minute, "That would be $80 for a costume slot. What is this, E** Online?"
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Yeah but im pretty sure Microsoft is getting sued over that choice, a class action lawsuit or something like that.|
Originally Posted by The_Spad_EU
Because everyone has learned that as Microsoft proved with Xbox Live that disconnecting Points from Pounds makes people spend more of them because it's harder to keep track of how much money you're actually spending. It's the same reason that you can only buy points in chunks that are almost entirely incongruous with the number of points that anything costs, so that you always have just too few or too many (leading to too few next time) points for what you want so you have to buy another chunk of too many or too few points.
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Though to be fair, many of the larger items on the market are sold in 400 point increments... 400, 800, 1200, 1600 etc... It's only when sales happen that this really changes... Sure a lot of the smaller items aren't 400 points or what ever, but enhancement inventory increase is 1600, new power sets are 800, new costume slots are 800 etc..
So as long as you do the math of 400 PP= 500$ it's very easy to see, hey this cost 5, this costs 10 etc.
And they sell points in 5, 15, 50 and 100 dollar increments, which means it's not that hard to get the amount you need. two 5 dollar purchases get you 10, 15 and 5 gets you 20 etc. All in all, I think this point system is quite a bit more friendly than Microsoft points or some of the others I've seen out there.
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That's how I figure it, as well, only for me it goes in the other direction. In seven years, the number of times I've been able to fill all five costume slots AND have ideas for more has been... Um, zero, actually. I don't ever remember having a new idea for a costume and not having the costume to do it with. So $10 for an extra costume slot is $10 wasted on nothing at all.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
I factor in the cost of something like this to the relative long term use I expect to get out of it. Sure $10 (or even $8) for one costume slot for one character can be considered to be way too expensive for most people. But if what you're buying is an extra slot for DOZENS of characters that will be available anytime you want it for potentially YEARS into the future then all of a sudden that $10 doesn't seem too far fetched. At least that's how I see it. *shrugs*
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Well, for me, anyway.
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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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Actually, buying in bulk gets you 20% extra, not savings. Which means actual savings work out as 16.7%, and that's assuming you wanted those extra points and didn't just want 8000 exactly.
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
But, buying points in bulk, you save 20%, which makes 1 Point = 1.0 cents.
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So for you it sounds like the costume slots would be "a waste of money" even if they sold them for one cent each. To each their own. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's how I figure it, as well, only for me it goes in the other direction. In seven years, the number of times I've been able to fill all five costume slots AND have ideas for more has been... Um, zero, actually. I don't ever remember having a new idea for a costume and not having the costume to do it with. So $10 for an extra costume slot is $10 wasted on nothing at all.
Well, for me, anyway. |
One could only assume that if there was some wonderful feature out there that you "really, really wanted" and had been waiting for over 7 years to get that you could see yourself spending $8-10 for it. It just so happens that for some people that feature was the extra costume slots.
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Exactly. It's better in MTX-supported games to set a budget in real-world amounts rather than try to estimate what the virtual one should be.|
Originally Posted by Mazey
Actually, buying in bulk gets you 20% extra, not savings. Which means actual savings work out as 16.7%, and that's assuming you wanted those extra points and didn't just want 8000 exactly.
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At this point, only the second month of CoH Freedom, I'm still working out what my budget will be under the new system. I can place the dollar amount as something like two booster packs a year plus one expansion pack (i.e. Going Rogue), provided Paragon Studios keeps the content coming. We received sufficient advance notice about new costume sets and power sets to factor those in, along with the signature arcs, but we're still in the process of determining what the prices will be like at the Paragon Store.
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80 Paragon Points = $1 USD or € 0.96 or £ 0.68|
Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I wondered how much a costume slot cost in the store, and was a bit taken aback to find it was (on sale) at 600 points. I was like 'HOW much??!'. Then when I worked it out at around 8 dollars, my reaction changed to 'oh, that's not a lot, really'.
If they'd have made 1 dollar equal to 1 point, I wouldn't have been initially unimpressed. 600 ppints sounds like a lot more than 8 dollars to me. Eco |
600 Paragon Points = $7.50 USD
Take the Paragon Points and divide by 80 to get the USD amount.
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This has ALWAYS made me boggle, because I have never seen that ever. They both come in packs of 12 where I live. |
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Precisely - it's the same reason (allegedly) hot dogs come in packs of ten and buns in packs of eight.
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Hey, I have no problem with it whatsoever. Everyone spends his money on what he really wants. For me, this just happens to be new costume pieces much more so than new costume slots |
Originally Posted by Lothic
One could only assume that if there was some wonderful feature out there that you "really, really wanted" and had been waiting for over 7 years to get that you could see yourself spending $8-10 for it. It just so happens that for some people that feature was the extra costume slots.
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It's very rare that I have even a many as three meaningful costumes per character, and most of the time most alternates are just filler so the slot doesn't stay empty forever.Now, if they were giving them away for nearly free... Sure, I'd grab the things, because even if I haven't needed them ever at all, a bargain is a bargain
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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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I know, just like those evil tokens at Chuck-E-Cheese, Dave & Busters, or those pesky '80s arcades |
Originally Posted by Spiked_Menace
Indeed. This is the reason why I will never buy Paragon Points or any other type of 'pretend money' like this.
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<shakes fist>
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The hot dogs I buy come in packs of eight. |
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Precisely - it's the same reason (allegedly) hot dogs come in packs of ten and buns in packs of eight.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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That is because you live in Paradise man. Everything is better there!|
Originally Posted by Moiread
This has ALWAYS made me boggle, because I have never seen that ever. They both come in packs of 12 where I live.
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis
The hot dogs I buy come in packs of eight.
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I wondered how much a costume slot cost in the store, and was a bit taken aback to find it was (on sale) at 600 points. I was like 'HOW much??!'. Then when I worked it out at around 8 dollars, my reaction changed to 'oh, that's not a lot, really'.
If they'd have made 1 dollar equal to 1 point, I wouldn't have been initially unimpressed. 600 ppints sounds like a lot more than 8 dollars to me.
Eco
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