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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 7 post(s) |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 11:49:00 -
[1]
Originally by: CCP Zinfandel So far, we've been successful at protecting the EVE economy. PLEX prices on the ISK market are currently unaffected.
We aren't making a lot of money but that's not the point.
àand tbh, I think that's one of the main problems here. If you had gone after it as a money-making enterprise, you would probably have chosen prices that are more in line with what people have come to expect from, say, the ST:O C-store (~$3 for an outfit, ~$10 for a whole bundle) or Aion ($10 for a skin change), or any of the FPS customization stores ($0.5û$6).
Instead, you've gone for an puny-income strategy that rather seems to be dictated by the in-game value of your IG-to-OOG value transfer veichle (PLEX). You seemingly want to make stuff insanely priced in-game (a billion ISK for a full outfit), which isn't all that unreasonable, but you're constrained by this transfer vehicle that immediately sets an out-of-game cost that is beyond ridiculous when compared to what customization options costs in other games, and which at at the same time has an important role to play as a subscription mechanism. Double-loading it with two completely different functions this way has created an impasse for what you can and cannot do with the prices and with the goods that are generated.
Had the NeX been fully functioning at release, and capable of accepting other forms of payment than just AUR, you could have worked around this to some extent ù make it cost $2.50 for a shirt (500 AUR), but also make it require the sacrifice of pure ISK, to the tune of, say, 300M ISK. In terms of pure $$ price, it would have been much more in line with what people expect, but it would still have set you back ~1 PLEX (350M ISK, of which 50M comes from the AUR price and 300M from the ISK price). |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 11:56:00 -
[2]
Originally by: Jada Maroo That just proves AUR shouldn't come from breaking up PLEX. AUR should just be purchased with money, pure and simple. Or even take out the AUR entirely and just give me a price list. Then make everything 99 cents to a maximum of 4.99.
This. The fact that they're over-loading the functionality of PLEX is one of, if not the greatest problem with the whole NeX store. Had it (and AUR) been decoupled from PLEX, it would have opened up for a far more reasonable and more nimble and adaptable mechanic for price-setting and cost balancing. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 12:08:00 -
[3]
Originally by: Jada Maroo CCP doesn't need a PLEX sink if they create a real money sink.
Weeeellà they'd still have to get rid of all those PLEXes somehow. Of course, if they had introduced the NeX in such a way that it offered a better bang for your buck (or ISK for your $$$) by buying stuff from the store and selling them on the secondary market, people would probably have scaled back on the PLEX purchases and the liability would have gone down over time that wayà |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 12:21:00 -
[4]
Originally by: DeBingJos Wasn't the whole idea behind AUR to create a PLEX-sink? The more PLEX get converted to AUR the better as this was the purpose of AUR from the start.
Yes, but that's also the problem: they can't create an effective PLEX sink because that would screw up a market that they need to protect. They need a PLEX bleed more than a PLEX sink.
àand yes, the NeX serves that purpose: by making the prices this high, the speed of the transactions will be low and the market won't go nuts. But on the other hand, this kind of pricing will make the real-life prices seem utterly bonkers.
So we have a huge expectations gap: players were expecting a customization store, at normal customization prices; CCP wanted a PLEX sink that didn't sink too many PLEXes at once. These two purposes are inherently incompatible. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 12:25:00 -
[5]
Edited by: Tippia on 08/07/2011 12:26:59
Originally by: Murashu Is $20-30 now a great deal of money?
It is compared to the cost of similar items in games where walking around and showing off your clothes is actually a large part of the gameà
It also goes completely against the basic psychology of microtransactions: people who are willing ù indeed, eager ù to buy 20 different $1 items would never in a million years spend money on a $15 item. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 12:48:00 -
[6]
Originally by: Zagdul While I'm sure their finance department would love this and the tinfoil hat wearers of EVE online would like to believe this is the sole purpose of the NeX store... it might very well be possible that CCP saw a potential problem with PLEX and is trying to correct a problem before the players destroy it.
This may be a stretch and I'm gonna get called every fanboy name in the book for this... but maybe CCP was looking out for the player's best interest all along?
That's entirely possible, but that only means that they've completely failed ù even after this dev blog ù to communicate what the NeX is for and why they've chosen this particular pricing structure.
If they simply stated "hey, the PLEX liabilities on our books are causing problems and we need to start bleeding PLEX from the economy", they would have been in a far better position to explain and respond to the criticism that the NeX has raised. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 13:59:00 -
[7]
Originally by: CCP Zinfandel We are just dipping our toes into the water here
àwhat I think I'm saying is this: dipping your toes will only make the whole thing unpleasant and protracted. A good swim begins with a head-long dive and a lot of splashing around. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 17:24:00 -
[8]
Edited by: Tippia on 08/07/2011 17:25:02
Originally by: Diametrix Let's all wake up and see what is happening here: CCP is pushing the MMO market forward.
Just one problem: none of this is new, and CCP is actually following in a well-trodden pathà except they're making mistakes that everyone else learned about many years ago.
Forging your own path is nice and all, but that doesn't mean there is no room for lessons already learned by others. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.08 19:07:00 -
[9]
Originally by: Ruffio Sepico Players been asking for more ISK faucets in EVE for a long time, now that we get one, no one appricate it either.
It's not an ISK faucet, so people not appreciating it from that perspective is hardly surprising. |
Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.09 19:30:00 -
[10]
Originally by: Kaylith Sen You are trying to make lots of real life ISK right?
No, they're not. That's what keeps people from understanding the strategy and the decision-making behind these obviously unprofitable prices: Originally by: CCP Zinfandel We aren't making a lot of money but that's not the point.
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Tippia
Caldari Sunshine and Lollipops
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Posted - 2011.07.10 10:06:00 -
[11]
Edited by: Tippia on 10/07/2011 10:07:46
Originally by: Florestan Bronstein I was under the impression we would get a "Why we chose this pricing strategy" blog not a "This is our pricing strategy" one - if I want to see the prices I just have to look into the NeX.
Pretty much. This dev blog doesn't do what it sets out to do.
The blog does not present a pricing strategy or explain CCP's approach to pricing; it just presents the prices of current and future items that this untold strategy and approach has generated. The blog kind of promised the process (which is actually interesting), but only presented the end results (which we can see in the store anyway).
There's still no word on why these prices and tiers were chosen. There is no word on what the goal is with the prices (or the NeX, for that matter). Why does the subscription-based EVE have more expensive MT than the MT-based games out there? The only thing we've gleamed is the comment on the first page that making money is not the point and that they don't want to upset the economy. That is the kind of information that is needed, and in absence, we can still only guess why things are the way they are.
Is it the case the the NeX is not an MT store in the sense everyone expects ù thus explaining that the prices are not what everyone expects ù but that its purpose is rather to slowly bleed the market of PLEX (which, agagin, explains the high prices)?
How much of the pricing is due to technical limitations? Did you want to make expensive items (in ISK terms) which, due to the unfinished state of the store meant that you had to set high AUR prices to get there?
You say you're only dipping your toes, but where is it supposed to lead? With a leisurely soak and scrubbing-off or with a Olympic swimming medal? What is it you're testing here, really? People's willingness to pay at all, or their willingness to pay these kinds of high prices, or their willingness to sacrifice game time for other services, or the market's response to a new kind of sink, orà what, exactly? Basicallyà Quote: Give us some insights into your actual strategy so we can make informed decisions, don't just tell us stuff we can already see by ourselves. Give us some confidence that the NeX store rests on a solid business plan and is not just another management failure.
àthis. |
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