Zeylon Rho
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
2642
   |
Posted - 2013.10.04 23:19:00 -
[1] - Quote
I think any time you spend real money on virtual items, you need a permanent "something" to justify it. Let's face it: anything you buy is a digital artifact that only exists within the universe of a specific game. You will never get use of it outside of that. So, having the items be expendable is akin to a toilet-flushing sort of effect in the background of your head. If you get permanent items, it's at least a little easier to justify. STD-quality items don't present any major balance issues, at least the suits/weapons haven't seemed to. For my part, bundles/packs of palette-swapped expendable items aren't very appealing.
Bear in mind that people buying merc packs are making pretty sizable investments in Dust. If you bought the Elite pack, that's $100 (and that assumes you bought it once, and didn't buy other things too - many people have invested more than $100). It had multiple permanent items, sure... but it's also got a sticker price around twice the cost of two retail physical games. TWO NEW GAMES = some items. I think it's good to keep in mind the sort of exchange rate BPOs have effectively had. The AUR cost of a single on-market suit, etc. was also pretty high - relative to the cost of an actual game.
Any suit paint-job scheme will sort of run against the value of the former purchases. A large part of why people might've purchased certain bundles was to get stuff that had a certain look. I know a lot of people like the Covenant suit because it has a different look. That's a $50 cosmetic decision, and people had cheaper options if it was just about getting a Caldari Assault suit.
A big part of why people dropped $20 for the gamestop Merc Pack was the "Syndicate" SMG. People were willing to pay $20 knowing that aside from the Merc pack stuff, they got a fire-engine red SMG. When Uprising launched, the color scheme was gone. Threads were launched, etc. asking what happened. It was "fixed" eventually, but instead of the fire-engine red, it was a dull-dirty red - somewhat similar to the Covenant Rifle. Some people were annoyed, but that was the fix. So, what do you do? It's not the exact cosmetic aesthetic you originally wanted - it got changed... balanced or something?
This cosmetic issue came up for me again with the Burnscar Pistol. It no longer has any special coloring at all. It was an AUR pistol mind you (real money) and had no reduced skill reqs or anything like that... the ONLY reason to purchase it was the cosmetics, which it no longer has.
So, this is part of my concern with an scheme that purports to sell cosmetics like suit-paint buckets. It devalues purchases made on that basis previously, and they already seem to have had some issues holding up there end of those bargains in the past. This also makes me think they won't do it, as they can sell individual paint-jobs as-is.
The relatively restricted nature of the offerings if another thing that concerns me. I'm not sure exactly why this is the case, but many new role/suit combos were released when the game launched. However, when the big reveal for new Merc packs was made, every single suit was of a pre-launch racial-role (Caldari Assault mostly, but Amarr Sentinel, Min Logi, and Gall Scout as well). This seems bizarrely narrow given the celebration of the expansion of the what was a small set of roles prior to the game launch.
This seems to emphasize the "suits as cosmetic" deal, as you can get some different items in various packs, but you're basically getting a bunch of different dye-jobs of Caldari Assaults. We had Minmatar Assaults/Scouts, Gallente Assault/Logi, Amarr Assault/Logi, and Caldari Logi all added when the game launched. You wouldn't know it from the market's BPO offerings in the Merc packs though. Even the vehicle BPOs weren't new (Saga LAVs being released previously).
I knew people in-corp suspected we hadn't seen things like Amarr suit BPOs because they wanted people to shell out for the collector's edition. At this point, you have to figure people that did buy the collector's might feel a bit robbed if they release those in a market bundle later as well.
Another problem is service with respect to packs themselves. We all expect our pet issues in Dust to be addressed ASAP of course, and this isn't entirely reasonable. However, with the packs in particular there's a loaded element because (unlike the game) the players are paying directly for a product of some sort. This reared it's head with the Dren gear in particular which was in the most expensive bundle sold ($100) with the stats being inconsistent. It's actually the only set of BPOs released in a Mercenary pack since I started playing that had lower than STD quality items, and it happened in the priciest bundle.
Insult to injury there is the items even SAY they're standard in the descriptions. It took a couple months to get a reply from CCP on the matter, and months later the stats still haven't changed. This becomes a concern "service-wise" when people pay for a product and it doesn't appear as advertised, and you don't seem to have any recourse as far as fixes. That's not a situation you want on your most expensive item. It erodes confidence in the consumer if you can't even get your virtual items to be as advertised (and you're effectively given items that you already have for free on starter fits by mistake).
That's my take... |
Zeylon Rho
Subdreddit
Test Alliance Please Ignore
2880
|
Posted - 2013.10.29 16:26:00 -
[2] - Quote
Draco Cerberus wrote:I'd like to be able to buy and sell PLEX "Concord 30 day pilot Licence Extension" from Dust for ISK. This would provide Devs with dollars and Mercs with ISK as well as Pilots with Plex. Win, Win, Win.
I'd generally like to be able to futz with the market. I don't know if they'd need to give us "market" skills to justify it though, as buy/sell/etc. orders from X distance are all tied to time-restricted skills in EVE. |