Edward Olmops
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Posted - 2011.06.23 21:28:00 -
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Edited by: Edward Olmops on 23/06/2011 21:32:05
I also like Incarna. Period.
The CQ look great, although I miss some of the menu buttons. Anyway, that was the deal: the old menu remains, so no one can complain.
And I was really shocked at first sight about the AUR prices (and the fact that there are only a few items in the NeX.)
Like 40 Euros for a monocle?!??! WTF???
But then I thought again. Why would CCP do this?
Stupidity? Unlikely. Then they would not be able to produce this game.
To squeeze money out of us? No. It is most basic economic knowledge that you don't earn most when the price is highest. Almost no one will buy the stuff.
So what then?
Two things came to my mind:
-PLEX prices. They start with expensive items so not many people will actually buy the stuff. That way, not many PLEXes will be converted and the PLEX price will not rise by too much. In other words: if the would have introduced cheaper clothes, there would be a risk that the PLEX price would rise dramatically and that would affect ANY capsuleer - especially those who have to get along with no real money at all!
-Rarity. If monocles would cost only 500 AUR, everyone and his mom would be wearing 2 of them - at least. That would kind of ruin the "uniqueness" would it not?
They could of course sell only a limited number of each item at a lower price. But who would be the lucky (=first ones) to get one? Everything would be sold out on day one by some greedy merchants and then hit the market at the price of a few billions. Just because it's rare.
And then CCP would not be able to get back their investment as they stated in their dev blog.
I estimate that each and every individual item costs several thousand euros to be implemented in the game. The thing needs to be invented, drawn, discussed, modelled, animated and tested in conjunction with all other stuff - which will easily consume a couple of mandays worth of developing effort!
They will most likely evaluate the demand, hire extra programmers for their new department "virtual goods production" and implement more and more stuff over time. Eventually, we get cheaper stuff in the future (5000 shirts sold at 1 Euro are the same as 500 shirts sold at 10 Euros). But the price directly corresponds to rarity.
Oh, and about the bugs:
It's a completely new technology, so I am not too surprised to see a couple of bugs, but I am confident that this will improve over time.
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