Pricing and addiction are different topics and you are confusing them with your article that is out of date and premise is about addictive personality and how it is gaming versus disposable income spending for entertainment
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
I didn't mention the whole GW mess in this post, just trends I believe are coming..
So we just need to sit here and accept your assumption of the future? Yeah ok I'll get right on that. While your at it can I get some lotto numbers? Or I this a may I buy drugs from you thing?
Not at all, I want you to investigate for yourself. Never take anyone at his word, always do your own homework when you hear anyone have a hypothesis. I didn't tell anyone it would be definitely my way, I said I believe this will happen
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
I didn't mention the whole GW mess in this post, just trends I believe are coming..
So we just need to sit here and accept your assumption of the future? Yeah ok I'll get right on that. While your at it can I get some lotto numbers? Or I this a may I buy drugs from you thing?
Not at all, I want you to investigate for yourself. Never take anyone at his word, always do your own homework when you hear anyone have a hypothesis. I didn't tell anyone it would be definitely my way, I said I believe this will happen
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
The developers would make much more money from incremental sales if they lowered the price structure. People would be much more likely to purchase packs at half of the prices being offered. More people would be excited about this game and give it better reviews, more word of mouth etc.
Ok ok ok , sure sounds like you can't afford the packs (or at least determine they are such bad value that you won't buy them) and that the only way for you to afford/value the packs is to have them much cheaper.
Up to this point you sound like you are fighting against IAP, but in reality you are fighting against the prices of IAP. So, if an addict can get an 8x pack for 20 bucks, and then you drop the price to 10 bucks, won't they just buy 2 packs instead?
So are you fighting against IAP, and how they harm individuals and people get addicted, or are you fine with IAP you just feel they need to be priced based on your personal preference?
To be honest, I am down for as cheap as possible. If 8x packs were a penny, I would buy a gazillion. I hope they listen to you, because I will get more for my money!!
I'll take cheaper for sure. I think the prices are high for what you get.
#1, I feel IAP is a terrible scourge on the industry. #2, prices are insane and if the developers were intelligent they would lower prices to do a higher volume.
#1, I feel IAP is a terrible scourge on the industry. #2, prices are insane and if the developers were intelligent they would lower prices to do a higher volume.
Not true. The developers will want more players to buy at higher prices. Just like branded handbags. Cheap ones are avoided much by women.
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
Actually, it does. It makes GW much more difficult (if not downright impossible) for F2P players with smaller, lower level rosters, while favoring the big spenders who have many high-level, 6/7*, fully geared characters. Now, since GW was one of the main shard sources in the game (you could easily get 15 shards daily), not being able to finish means I won't be able to build up my team, ranking lower and lower in the arena, while the P2P players climb to the top. So basically the rich get richer (by gaining mlre and more shards), while the poor are left behind to pick up scraps.
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
Actually, it does. It makes GW much more difficult (if not downright impossible) for F2P players with smaller, lower level rosters, while favoring the big spenders who have many high-level, 6/7*, fully geared characters. Now, since GW was one of the main shard sources in the game (you could easily get 15 shards daily), not being able to finish means I won't be able to build up my team, ranking lower and lower in the arena, while the P2P players climb to the top. So basically the rich get richer (by gaining mlre and more shards), while the poor are left behind to pick up scraps.
Why do people who do not spend money expect to be on the same level as people who do?
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
I didn't mention the whole GW mess in this post, just trends I believe are coming..
So we just need to sit here and accept your assumption of the future? Yeah ok I'll get right on that. While your at it can I get some lotto numbers? Or I this a may I buy drugs from you thing?
Not at all, I want you to investigate for yourself. Never take anyone at his word, always do your own homework when you hear anyone have a hypothesis. I didn't tell anyone it would be definitely my way, I said I believe this will happen
Your title states otherwise.
Let's keep it real, outside of the posts from devs and mods, everything else is conjecture and beliefs. All of us here in this thread have no facts to prove anything. All we are all doing is simply spouting ideas we would like to see come to life. That means, every post in this whole forum are opinions only, regardless of topic......
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
I didn't mention the whole GW mess in this post, just trends I believe are coming..
So we just need to sit here and accept your assumption of the future? Yeah ok I'll get right on that. While your at it can I get some lotto numbers? Or I this a may I buy drugs from you thing?
Not at all, I want you to investigate for yourself. Never take anyone at his word, always do your own homework when you hear anyone have a hypothesis. I didn't tell anyone it would be definitely my way, I said I believe this will happen
Your title states otherwise.
Let's keep it real, outside of the posts from devs and mods, everything else is conjecture and beliefs. All of us here in this thread have no facts to prove anything. All we are all doing is simply spouting ideas we would like to see come to life. That means, every post in this whole forum are opinions only, regardless of topic......
That's not true at all. You specifically state your opinions as fact. Your poorly developed red herring does not take away from the fact people here do know what they are talking about.
@DarthNight , so you feel people are going to spend more if IAP prices are kept at the same level or even raised?
It's up to the players to decide what they want to do. The game is priced in a certain way by the devs/executives and there is little room to wiggle here. Have you ever done some research on the IAP model in this game before even investing the time and effort in this game? If you disagree with the IAP model in this game, why did you even want to play it and struggle with all those unequal feelings?
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
Imagine, the Google Play store says there are 1 million+ people who downloaded this. Lets say that 500K stuck around, the rest tried the game and didn't like it. If say 80% or 400K bought $150 in IAP, that would work out to be $60 million in IAP on this game alone. The real numbers would actually be closer to $100 million at that pace. Is making $100 million on this game for EA a loss?? If it is and they can't get ahead with such a small profit, I don't know then....
The gw change had nothing to do with pandering to the 1%.
Actually, it does. It makes GW much more difficult (if not downright impossible) for F2P players with smaller, lower level rosters, while favoring the big spenders who have many high-level, 6/7*, fully geared characters. Now, since GW was one of the main shard sources in the game (you could easily get 15 shards daily), not being able to finish means I won't be able to build up my team, ranking lower and lower in the arena, while the P2P players climb to the top. So basically the rich get richer (by gaining mlre and more shards), while the poor are left behind to pick up scraps.
Hence the title and the content of my OP. Thank you for understanding my "opinion". The funny part is that people bash me for this opinion like I'm cursing people...
@DarthNight , so you feel people are going to spend more if IAP prices are kept at the same level or even raised?
I know for myself, I set a specific amount of money I will spend (assuming I enjoy the game). If the prices drop, I won't spend more... I will keep my spending the same.
I will say this, I have never played a game where the contents of the packs were so horrid. The idea of getting part of a character is mind boggling to me. That's why 80%+ of my spending in this game has gone to crystals, not to some character lottery.
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
This actually made me think: $300 does seem steep, even though I could afford it, I probably would maybe spend that over a year. Maybe.
However, when you get right down to it, it is a relatively cheap and benign form of entertainment.
Question: how many hours do you expect to spend over the course of a year playing the game? How much per hour is that? 300 hours in a year and paying 300 dollars is pretty darn cheap.
Question: how much would you spend on other things? Baseball game? Movies? How many hours would you spend doing these things and how much would you pay?
Summary: I think we are experiencing a fairly new phenomenon of entertainment and some folks are having trouble grasping the scope, especially since there's no solid precedent for the model other than the last few years.
And finally keep in mind that we are seeing very awesome quality of games in our fricken phones and all of that doesn't happen without an associated cost. I promise if we were to make IAP illegal, we'd see much less quality games, and even worse, the small developer guys and independent game shops would be hurt most.
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
Imagine, the Google Play store says there are 1 million+ people who downloaded this. Lets say that 500K stuck around, the rest tried the game and didn't like it. If say 80% or 400K bought $150 in IAP, that would work out to be $60 million in IAP on this game alone. The real numbers would actually be closer to $100 million at that pace. Is making $100 million on this game for EA a loss?? If it is and they can't get ahead with such a small profit, I don't know then....
Do you know how much their expenses are? What was the cost to buy the Star Wars rights? Salaries of employees for the months in which the game was not producing a profit? Cost of maintaining servers? Cost of customer service salaries? Cost of legal and accounting fees?
That is an outstanding article! Too bad so few people will read it. Most people will barely read a two paragraph response in a forum; therefore, reading a multi-page article is well out of their reasonable actions.
That's not true at all. You specifically state your opinions as fact. Your poorly developed red herring does not take away from the fact people here do know what they are talking about.
You are similarly telling me that your opinion is fact, so we are exactly the same then?? When a person says "I believe" or "I think" or "In my opinion", as I have said, then all we can conclude is that these are not facts. You and I are exactly the same Pay2Win, we both have strong opinions and we feel strongly about them. The only people in this entire forum speaking "facts" are the devs, mods and admins. Anyone who is not an employee of EA/CG and in the loop are assuming, including you and me, this is the reality....
Welllll if this is all theory my mba says supply side economics sets supply and demand , but also the price paradigm where setting the value bar to low devalues your brand
@DarthNight , so you feel people are going to spend more if IAP prices are kept at the same level or even raised?
I know for myself, I set a specific amount of money I will spend (assuming I enjoy the game). If the prices drop, I won't spend more... I will keep my spending the same.
I will say this, I have never played a game where the contents of the packs were so horrid. The idea of getting part of a character is mind boggling to me. That's why 80%+ of my spending in this game has gone to crystals, not to some character lottery.
Yes, they are horrid but note: they are horrid to everyone. Everyone is kept at a same pace unless they choose to spend a lot of money like in the thousands. I think we should all feel great about this. This means that those dolphins who spend $300 won't be able to have a great edge over F2P and that levels the playing field a lot. Only those who spends >$1k will have an edge.
Do you know how much their expenses are? What was the cost to buy the Star Wars rights? Salaries of employees for the months in which the game was not producing a profit? Cost of maintaining servers? Cost of customer service salaries? Cost of legal and accounting fees?
I personally don't know the cost and I'm sure you don't either, so you then have to concede that "maybe" I'm right, "maybe" I'm not. The funny part is that fighting me is like fighting yourself, you ask questions of me that you can't answer either and then try to make it appear as if you have the proper opinion when your opinion is as good or worthless as mine, but keep fighting it if you must....
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
Imagine, the Google Play store says there are 1 million+ people who downloaded this. Lets say that 500K stuck around, the rest tried the game and didn't like it. If say 80% or 400K bought $150 in IAP, that would work out to be $60 million in IAP on this game alone. The real numbers would actually be closer to $100 million at that pace. Is making $100 million on this game for EA a loss?? If it is and they can't get ahead with such a small profit, I don't know then....
@ioniancat21 I understand exactly what you are getting at. I just finished writing to one of the developers about the disgusting pricing in this game. I'm hoping something can be done to correct this issue. Until then, I'm changing my review of this game to one star and I encourage everyone else to do the same. People seem to overlook the fact that there's a lot of options to strike back at a company who has failed its customers.
Just for s&g, what is your pricing suggestion? What would they have to change for you to become a "whale" and drop thousands in this game?
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
Imagine, the Google Play store says there are 1 million+ people who downloaded this. Lets say that 500K stuck around, the rest tried the game and didn't like it. If say 80% or 400K bought $150 in IAP, that would work out to be $60 million in IAP on this game alone. The real numbers would actually be closer to $100 million at that pace. Is making $100 million on this game for EA a loss?? If it is and they can't get ahead with such a small profit, I don't know then....
I can appreciate the logic here but based on any research I've done, your numbers are astronomically high in terms of percentages.
If you can get 20% retention for even a month, you're doing amazing and probably off the charts.
If you can get 20% of those retained to be repeat paying customers you are doing amazing and probably off charts.
It's generally something like 3-5% will pay, and only a small percentage of those will become "whales". That was data from a year or so ago so trends could have increased some.
My disclaimer is that I have no insight to EA's numbers or expectations, these are simply based on my knowledge.
Is no one going to argue over the idea that 80% of active players would pay $150? That's a hilarious idea.
Here's how IAPs work:
.15% of all players are "whales". This .15% makes up about 50% of your profits.
The other 50% comes from the other 1.5-2% of active players that spend money on the game.
98% of players will never spend a cent on the game.
@pay2win , I don't, which is why I accept the fact that the changes made to the game (although described as introduced to make the game more "fair" and "consistent" for everyone) were meant to widen the gap between F2P and P2P. The comment I was replying to was simply false and I pointed out why. It wasn't a complaint, it wasn't "whining", it was a statement of fact, pure and simple. Why would you assume I expect to be in the same position as someone who invested hundreds or thousanda of $ into this game? O_o That makes no sense.
Do you know how much their expenses are? What was the cost to buy the Star Wars rights? Salaries of employees for the months in which the game was not producing a profit? Cost of maintaining servers? Cost of customer service salaries? Cost of legal and accounting fees?
I personally don't know the cost and I'm sure you don't either, so you then have to concede that "maybe" I'm right, "maybe" I'm not. The funny part is that fighting me is like fighting yourself, you ask questions of me that you can't answer either and then try to make it appear as if you have the proper opinion when your opinion is as good or worthless as mine, but keep fighting it if you must....
Of course, I don't know the actual numbers. I have never even attempted to guess because there are so many variables. However, I do know the difference between gross income and net income.
Most people with any accounting experience will tell you your numbers are way off. You've assumed a way higher profit than most best case scenarios would present. Not including possible expenses is another huge flaw in your thinking.
Replies
Not at all, I want you to investigate for yourself. Never take anyone at his word, always do your own homework when you hear anyone have a hypothesis. I didn't tell anyone it would be definitely my way, I said I believe this will happen
Your title states otherwise.
Just for fun, I'll add to this question. In my view, IAP should max out to be around $300 per player, which to me sounds affordable for about 80% of the players. That would mean a player could spend $100 and it would have a good ROI on their game whereas spending $300 would unlock all the bells and whistles..
I'll take cheaper for sure. I think the prices are high for what you get.
Not true. The developers will want more players to buy at higher prices. Just like branded handbags. Cheap ones are avoided much by women.
That's incredibly cheap. Especially, for a game with a decent life span
Actually, it does. It makes GW much more difficult (if not downright impossible) for F2P players with smaller, lower level rosters, while favoring the big spenders who have many high-level, 6/7*, fully geared characters. Now, since GW was one of the main shard sources in the game (you could easily get 15 shards daily), not being able to finish means I won't be able to build up my team, ranking lower and lower in the arena, while the P2P players climb to the top. So basically the rich get richer (by gaining mlre and more shards), while the poor are left behind to pick up scraps.
Why do people who do not spend money expect to be on the same level as people who do?
Let's keep it real, outside of the posts from devs and mods, everything else is conjecture and beliefs. All of us here in this thread have no facts to prove anything. All we are all doing is simply spouting ideas we would like to see come to life. That means, every post in this whole forum are opinions only, regardless of topic......
That's not true at all. You specifically state your opinions as fact. Your poorly developed red herring does not take away from the fact people here do know what they are talking about.
It's up to the players to decide what they want to do. The game is priced in a certain way by the devs/executives and there is little room to wiggle here. Have you ever done some research on the IAP model in this game before even investing the time and effort in this game? If you disagree with the IAP model in this game, why did you even want to play it and struggle with all those unequal feelings?
Imagine, the Google Play store says there are 1 million+ people who downloaded this. Lets say that 500K stuck around, the rest tried the game and didn't like it. If say 80% or 400K bought $150 in IAP, that would work out to be $60 million in IAP on this game alone. The real numbers would actually be closer to $100 million at that pace. Is making $100 million on this game for EA a loss?? If it is and they can't get ahead with such a small profit, I don't know then....
Hence the title and the content of my OP. Thank you for understanding my "opinion". The funny part is that people bash me for this opinion like I'm cursing people...
I know for myself, I set a specific amount of money I will spend (assuming I enjoy the game). If the prices drop, I won't spend more... I will keep my spending the same.
I will say this, I have never played a game where the contents of the packs were so horrid. The idea of getting part of a character is mind boggling to me. That's why 80%+ of my spending in this game has gone to crystals, not to some character lottery.
This actually made me think: $300 does seem steep, even though I could afford it, I probably would maybe spend that over a year. Maybe.
However, when you get right down to it, it is a relatively cheap and benign form of entertainment.
Question: how many hours do you expect to spend over the course of a year playing the game? How much per hour is that? 300 hours in a year and paying 300 dollars is pretty darn cheap.
Question: how much would you spend on other things? Baseball game? Movies? How many hours would you spend doing these things and how much would you pay?
Summary: I think we are experiencing a fairly new phenomenon of entertainment and some folks are having trouble grasping the scope, especially since there's no solid precedent for the model other than the last few years.
And finally keep in mind that we are seeing very awesome quality of games in our fricken phones and all of that doesn't happen without an associated cost. I promise if we were to make IAP illegal, we'd see much less quality games, and even worse, the small developer guys and independent game shops would be hurt most.
Do you know how much their expenses are? What was the cost to buy the Star Wars rights? Salaries of employees for the months in which the game was not producing a profit? Cost of maintaining servers? Cost of customer service salaries? Cost of legal and accounting fees?
That is an outstanding article! Too bad so few people will read it. Most people will barely read a two paragraph response in a forum; therefore, reading a multi-page article is well out of their reasonable actions.
You are similarly telling me that your opinion is fact, so we are exactly the same then?? When a person says "I believe" or "I think" or "In my opinion", as I have said, then all we can conclude is that these are not facts. You and I are exactly the same Pay2Win, we both have strong opinions and we feel strongly about them. The only people in this entire forum speaking "facts" are the devs, mods and admins. Anyone who is not an employee of EA/CG and in the loop are assuming, including you and me, this is the reality....
Yes, they are horrid but note: they are horrid to everyone. Everyone is kept at a same pace unless they choose to spend a lot of money like in the thousands. I think we should all feel great about this. This means that those dolphins who spend $300 won't be able to have a great edge over F2P and that levels the playing field a lot. Only those who spends >$1k will have an edge.
Second question, I am curious to know who the people are who speak facts here in the forum outside of the EA staff??
I personally don't know the cost and I'm sure you don't either, so you then have to concede that "maybe" I'm right, "maybe" I'm not. The funny part is that fighting me is like fighting yourself, you ask questions of me that you can't answer either and then try to make it appear as if you have the proper opinion when your opinion is as good or worthless as mine, but keep fighting it if you must....
I can appreciate the logic here but based on any research I've done, your numbers are astronomically high in terms of percentages.
If you can get 20% retention for even a month, you're doing amazing and probably off the charts.
If you can get 20% of those retained to be repeat paying customers you are doing amazing and probably off charts.
It's generally something like 3-5% will pay, and only a small percentage of those will become "whales". That was data from a year or so ago so trends could have increased some.
My disclaimer is that I have no insight to EA's numbers or expectations, these are simply based on my knowledge.
Here's how IAPs work:
.15% of all players are "whales". This .15% makes up about 50% of your profits.
The other 50% comes from the other 1.5-2% of active players that spend money on the game.
98% of players will never spend a cent on the game.
http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/26/only-0-15-of-mobile-gamers-account-for-50-percent-of-all-in-game-revenue-exclusive/
Edit: El_Duderino beat me to it
Of course, I don't know the actual numbers. I have never even attempted to guess because there are so many variables. However, I do know the difference between gross income and net income.
Most people with any accounting experience will tell you your numbers are way off. You've assumed a way higher profit than most best case scenarios would present. Not including possible expenses is another huge flaw in your thinking.