Originally posted by 3-4thElf
For a F2P arena game I found the prices to be a bit out of touch with the games they'll be competing with in the market. I mean I know the Marvel brand carries some weight, but the prepurchase prices for a beta that a lot of players will probably get to see for free also? I'm in the wrong business. Bottled water and pay to play betas.

At the same time, they are giving away part of the game. So it depends on where you stand.

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

At this point I don't think that would help. It looks as if this was designed with the current cash shop in mind. The starting 5 combined with current pricing simply indicates that a design decision was made to funnel players to the cash shop. I just don't see this playing out well. If the heroes don't require excessive amounts of work (Time) to unlock then it defeats the purpose of offering them on the cash shop at $20 a pop, if they do then f2p players aren't likely to stick around. 

Removing the $200 offer doesn't remove the design decisions that would be required to make it an enticing offer and even then you are left with the rest of the offers requiring the same design decisions to work. 

I'd rather pay the $60 up front and play a game designed around that ARPG business model rather than pay $20-$200 for a game thats sole design purposes is to funnel me to a cash shop. 

A lot of MMO's and Others fail largely for a failure to use an appropriate business model for what the game has to offer. Not every game can survive as or is worth pay to play. Not every game is suited for free to play. Not every game is a good buy to play candidate. Not every free to play game is designed for the freemium model. Yet many publishers seem to feel the need to learn this the hard way. 

Marvel Heroes was a prime example of a buy to play game, yet they went the free to play route hoping for even more revenue. 

In any case do not concern yourself with my opinions to much. I've written off the game for a number of reasons. 

1) The decision to go point and click with no WASD option even in the near future according to the devs. 

2) Inappropriate business model for the type of game

3) The starting 5 choices

4) The cash shop focus the game is going to need to have to be profitable. Without funneling players to the cash shop and gating content its not going to make them any money since it lacks the initial price tag of other ARPG's. 

I like discussing the issues the game has though with others so I will be popping in and out, if it bothers you simply ignore me and write me off as a hater because I have no intentions of playing. 

Originally posted by GrayGhost79
 

I'd rather pay the $60 up front and play a game designed around that ARPG business model rather than pay $20-$200 for a game thats sole design purposes is to funnel me to a cash shop. 

You wont see new MMO games without cashshops. Its the model they all go for, just recently 500 MMOs have went that way :)

Beside you fail to notice that Marvel Heroes will release new heroes reguarly, and costumes. While you can play and unlock them all for free (even Heroes drops in the game) many people want to play the latest flair as fast as possible.

So they have lots of heroes, and they have David Breivik to make the skills and the skill trees diverse.

WASD movement in a ARPG? That is blasphemy.

It's hard to tell if the full game will be good, there could be lack of content etc.  Gief beta :)

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Nope.  I'd feel better if the game were $20 outright, like its competitor, Torchlight 2.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Nope.  I'd feel better if the game were $20 outright, like its competitor, Torchlight 2.

They're not even in the same ballpark.

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Nope.  I'd feel better if the game were $20 outright, like its competitor, Torchlight 2.

They're not even in the same ballpark.

Why not?  They are both ARPGs by former Diablo1-2 team members.  They look identical to me, except one is medieval and one is a super hero game charging an extra $180 for name recognition and little else.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Nope.  I'd feel better if the game were $20 outright, like its competitor, Torchlight 2.

They're not even in the same ballpark.

Why not?  They are both ARPGs by former Diablo1-2 team members.  They look identical to me, except one is medieval and one is a super hero game charging an extra $180 for name recognition and little else.

Does not look anywhere close to me but I guess I do not have as warped a vision. I will agree however that the pricing model is way overinflated.

Originally posted by Souldrainer

Originally posted by birdycephon

Would it make you feel better if they removed the ultimate pack and only had 5 heroes at launch? Cuz then it would be trully a $60 game.

Nope.  I'd feel better if the game were $20 outright, like its competitor, Torchlight 2.

Actually, it would be more accurate to compare it to Path of Exile.

On topic, I don't begrudge rich people for using their money. Most of them work / worked pretty damn hard for it. However, I believe P.T. Barnum has a few famous quotes which could apply to someone paying $200 for a game they've never even played. Particularly one about a fool and their money...

Edit: And if I'm dropping $200 for a product which I haven't even seen or played yet, you goddamn well better let me into the beta, and allow refunds if I'm not satisfied.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cecropia
It would appear that this new attempt to raise the level of acceptable cash grab even further has finally brought us to the ceiling. Good news, but disturbing nonetheless that it took 200$ for a 60$ game for us to get there.

I don't know what is people's problem with this. Just don't pay it. Why would  it bother you that someone else did?

It is their product. Don't you think that they should be able to charge whatever they want?

It is a free world. You are free not to buy.

Do you know how the $15/month came to be for subs games?

I'll skip a few steps here because at one point you paid per hours and whatnot. But when the idea of a monthly fee started growing you'd have games going for about $5/month if I remember correctly, then it increased to $10/month, $12/month etc. There was more or less of a 'survey' at one point that asked players how much they would be willing to pay to play per month, and soon after we settled on a $15 monthly fee.

Say Blizzard for example decided that starting tomorrow, the monthly fee for WoW will be $20/month. Now what do you think will happen if players continue to pay at that higher price? Well it tells developers that it's alright to charge $20/month and more MMOs will appear charging $20/month. And eventually $20 will turn into $25, $30, or more. However what happens if players decide not to pay $20/month and leave the game? Well it will tell developers that players don't agree that MMOs are worth $20/month.

The same applies to F2P cash shop. If you start selling stuff at $200 and players buy it, well for developers that will be a sign that they can charge even more. So that Double EXP Potion you bought last week for $1,99 might cost you $3,99 this week, and maybe next week it will be $4,99 or $5,99

I already know your answer to this. "It's a free world. Don't play it if you don't like it." However if I as a player have invested both money and time in a game I liked, I think voicing my dissatisfaction with the new pricing is an absolutely reasonable action that may force the company to revert to the lower price  if enough players voice their opinions. This is exactly what happened with Allods Online (back in 08-09?) where the Cash Shop was so ridiculously overpriced that it nearly killed them until they began to slowly review their CS model (however they still have a relatively weak playerbase in comparison to what they could've had, had they not been greedy).

If players would just shut themselves up when faced with a pricing that they believe is far too high for what it's worth, well developers will think that the pricing is just fine, when in reality it's the complete opposite. And soon we'll be faced with a market full of highly overpriced items that's become the new 'norm'. Something we pretty much all want to avoid, even if we've already fallen for this quite a few times.

Originally posted by Rednecksith

Edit: And if I'm dropping $200 for a product which I haven't even seen or played yet, you goddamn well better let me into the beta, and allow refunds if I'm not satisfied.

I havent seen any who complained about the game yet. Even though its under NDA, people will complain on twitter and forums etc

It's a good sign :)

Originally posted by MadnessRealm

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Cecropia
It would appear that this new attempt to raise the level of acceptable cash grab even further has finally brought us to the ceiling. Good news, but disturbing nonetheless that it took 200$ for a 60$ game for us to get there.

I don't know what is people's problem with this. Just don't pay it. Why would  it bother you that someone else did?

It is their product. Don't you think that they should be able to charge whatever they want?

It is a free world. You are free not to buy.

Do you know how the $15/month came to be for subs games?

I'll skip a few steps here because at one point you paid per hours and whatnot. But when the idea of a monthly fee started growing you'd have games going for about $5/month if I remember correctly, then it increased to $10/month, $12/month etc. There was more or less of a 'survey' at one point that asked players how much they would be willing to pay to play per month, and soon after we settled on a $15 monthly fee.

Say Blizzard for example decided that starting tomorrow, the monthly fee for WoW will be $20/month. Now what do you think will happen if players continue to pay at that higher price? Well it tells developers that it's alright to charge $20/month and more MMOs will appear charging $20/month. And eventually $20 will turn into $25, $30, or more. However what happens if players decide not to pay $20/month and leave the game? Well it will tell developers that players don't agree that MMOs are worth $20/month.

The same applies to F2P cash shop. If you start selling stuff at $200 and players buy it, well for developers that will be a sign that they can charge even more. So that Double EXP Potion you bought last week for $1,99 might cost you $3,99 this week, and maybe next week it will be $4,99 or $5,99

I already know your answer to this. "It's a free world. Don't play it if you don't like it." However if I as a player have invested both money and time in a game I liked, I think voicing my dissatisfaction with the new pricing is an absolutely reasonable action that may force the company to revert to the lower price  if enough players voice their opinions. This is exactly what happened with Allods Online (back in 08-09?) where the Cash Shop was so ridiculously overpriced that it nearly killed them until they began to slowly review their CS model (however they still have a relatively weak playerbase in comparison to what they could've had, had they not been greedy).

If players would just shut themselves up when faced with a pricing that they believe is far too high for what it's worth, well developers will think that the pricing is just fine, when in reality it's the complete opposite. And soon we'll be faced with a market full of highly overpriced items that's become the new 'norm'. Something we pretty much all want to avoid, even if we've already fallen for this quite a few times.

That is just a bunch of guess-work. All you need to do is NOT to buy. Yelling on forums won't matter a bit if millions comes out to pay those prices.

No complaining is necessarily if they can sell any. That is the beauty of a free market.

I was there when Kingdom of Drakkar cost $2 per HOUR to play. So what? Some pay .. and it goes away because you can attract more people with $10 a month.

So now most MMO is F2P. I don't see anything to complain about. I doubt most people are paying $200 ... more than likely 90% of their players will be free players.