If you guys need to make more money, add cosmetics. I would pay $5 to give my Gobtruffles shades

[Megaqwerty]

…and I bet a ton of others would, too.

This is secondarily a joke thread as I know the devs have stated that cosmetics will never happen but is primary commentary on recent events.

I know that this is a topic that comes up all the time, but it is mind boggling why it has not been implemented when it would generate revenue in a way that does not antagonize players but rather they would absolutely love. (Unlike a certain new event that you might have heard about.)

Creating cosmetics such troop modifications would require significant work, both to implement and design, but there are already two existing systems that would allow for simple expansion of cosmetic options:

• Pets
• Hero style

Both of these already exist in the game. Creating more options at palatable prices* would allow monetization of non-whales who would otherwise never spend money on this game because the premium shop is a hilariously bad value. But fighting elder gods with a top hat? That’s priceless.

*There are already premium cosmetic pets (the platform exclusive ones), but there’s only a handful of them and they cost $50. Similarly, there’s only two hero styles available and they’re also horrible values at $10 despite including some other items.

I just remembered Tacet’s stream mentioned selling the ability to select festive themes whenever you like . Those assets already exists so the only work necessary would be programming the functionality.

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The following is from below posts, but it is important include in this thread’s introduction.

@Slypenslyde

The Dev opinion is they tried one time, like 5 years ago, with the vanity armors, and they didn’t feel like they broke even, so every other F2P is wrong and you can’t make money off cosmetic items (as opposed to “GoW tried a very bad approach that involved making tons of art assets per item”. We all know the devs don’t make mistakes.)

The counterargument to the cost of creating cosmetic items is the following:

I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think the devs broke even on the cost of creating this asset.

[oninowon]

They already addressed this saying for them, cosmetics don’t make much money for them for the effort they put in.

[Megaqwerty]

@oninowon

They already addressed this saying for them, cosmetics don’t make much money for them for the effort they put in.

You mean all four of them, two of which cost $50?

I just remembered Tacet’s stream mentioned selling the ability to select festive themes whenever you like. Those assets already exists so the only work necessary would be programming the functionality.

[Elroy]

I’d definitely pay a reasonable amount to have non boring skulls year round.

[madking]

at the very beginning of the game, every card could be pulled with standard or shiny graphic (shiny had different frames)

[Slypenslyde]

I’ve asked before. The Dev opinion is they tried one time, like 5 years ago, with the vanity armors, and they didn’t feel like they broke even, so every other F2P is wrong and you can’t make money off cosmetic items (as opposed to “GoW tried a very bad approach that involved making tons of art assets per item”. We all know the devs don’t make mistakes.)

[Magnusimus]

Thing is, the new medals are here one week, gone the next * poof! *

So where does that effort vs. payback factor in there?

If the reason ALL the medals now look like garbage is because the weekly ones are disposable and therefore not worth the polish (and they don’t want the comparisons to be so readily apparent), that’s really weird.

And would anyone have cared if medals that were around for one week looked worse than those we have all the time? Doubt it.

And I also doubt that any art assets that can be thrown away after only one week of use (or after a few months, as with the old medals) really cost more development money than could be made from people if they were on offer for purchase at reasonable rates.

Give me the “old medals” option for 2 bucks, and I’m immediately sold. Others would be, too. Same with holiday skulls, holiday music themes, etc…

[redmist]

I would go for 3D-looking translucent mana orbs.

[Lorien1973]

To be fair, you dont see the armor very often in this game or it’s too small to notice differenced

[Jonathan]

Gobtruffle shades have been mentioned enough times that I think it would be a pretty safe bet .

[Lorien1973]

Maybe a little sailor on top of maraji queen?

[Lyrian]

@Megaqwerty

Creating cosmetics such troop modifications would require significant work

And that kills this idea permanently, full stop.

@Magnusimus

And I also doubt that any art assets that can be thrown away after only one week of use (or after a few months, as with the old medals) really cost more development money than could be made from people if they were on offer for purchase at reasonable rates.

You’re close to the likely actual reasoning in play here.

The issue here is easier to see if one compares the “old GoW” and “new GoW” monetization models. This is basically comparing the traditional purchasing model versus the modern monetization model.

Cosmetic purchases fall into the traditional purchasing model, which is when a player directly purchases a virtual thing, and they get access to whatever it is permanently. The older purchasable weapons for $5 USD (or your local equivalent) also fall into this category.

The key difference between the traditional model and the modern model is that the modern model emphasizes repetitive purchases of temporary or consumable items. Chaos Orbs are somewhat a nod to this, but the new World Event medals bring this logic out front and center for all to see. Instead of a weekly troop to chase (which has distinct art costs, developer costs, and testing costs), World Events seek to have players chasing the same re-usable medal from event to event. As such, there is only a single one-time set of production costs involved with these medals and potentially infinite opportunities for players to re-purchase them repeatedly, a far more profitable venture.

Similarly, the World Event system follows the same design mechanic. The system is designed to near-automate generation of weekly events by simply feeding it a bunch of variables, similar to team codes (restrictions, location of map to zoom in on, scoring method, and so on), instead of very expensive hand-crafted game modes such as Delves.

So, looking forward, if something is going to be placed in-game to be monetized, that thing is going to have to be a consumable item that can be repetitively purchased. And that reason is why there will almost assuredly never be any additional cosmetics added to the game.

[redmist]

@Lorien1973

Maybe a little sailor on top of maraji queen?

How about an animated sailor on top of the maraji queen which gets flung about violently when flying forth and back across the screen to do skull damage? The level of violence scaling horrifically with higher animation speed settings.

[Fleg]

I get what you’re saying but a cosmetic shop if implemented would always be there selling items to the entire playerbase and also all future players and they could keep adding to it every week. These event medals only exist for a week.

Also I don’t buy the argument that giving sunglasses to a troop or a fancy border for the card etc. amounts to too much work. I have no knowledge of game programming but I just can’t see how this would be so difficult.

[Slypenslyde]

I get what you’re saying but here’s my experience.

I play three games right now.

One is a fantasy match-3 RPG that sells only temporary consumables. I’ve played for so long I understand those consumables are maybe worth $3 but are being sold for $15 and up. I have spent about $4 on the game in the past 2 years, on impulse buys of new currencies I didn’t understand.

One is a waifu gacha game that only sells new outfits for the characters. It has fairly generous gacha rates and I think in a year I’ve missed only 2 characters. I’ve spent at least $100 on this game in the last year.

One is a life simulator that sells consumable currency that… is used to buy cosmetic items. I started playing it a few years ago and stopped for a long time, but picked it back up recently. I’ve already spent $10 on it in 3 weeks.

Which of these models seems to be working, from my perspective?

[Hoop]

The way they are wanting to squeeze money, maybe someone is going to have to set up a Gofundme for them Maybe when it hits a certain amount they will fix a certain bug, or add something thats been promised for years…

[TShann93]

"One is a waifu gacha game that only sells new outfits for the characters. "

Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.

JUST LET ME BUY AN OUTFIT FOR ATLANTA

[Lorien1973]

How about Irongut? He could consume part of the screen with each bite…showing the matrix code or something.

Mongo could force your computer control-shift- right (or left) when he casts a spell. Becoming really annoying.

[Megaqwerty]

@Lyrian

Instead of a weekly troop to chase (which has distinct art costs, developer costs, and testing costs), World Events seek to have players chasing the same re-usable medal from event to event.

Devs: Creating event troops is very expensive so please understand why we will be switching to a different model.
Also Devs: Anyway, here’s a this week’s useless glory troop.

Also also: creating event troops would add value to the game if they actually had any utility outside of their events. It would be better for both the community and the developers if, instead of creating six useless troops a month (glory plus events)*, they created less that will be utilized by players.

*This ignores factions, mythics, legendaries, and bountyhunters, most, but not all, are dead content immediately after arrival. Before arrival if you count spoilers.

I+2’s insistence on creating dead content reflects very poorly on arguments such as yours, even though what you are saying is completely correct and is what a business should be doing.

Here’s a highly questionable design that bothered me when I first played the game at release: spell art should not exist because it adds no value. And the spell art is often very inconsistent with the troop art. I personally would immediately remove it from the game and not worry about it for future troops. Yeah, it would generate backlash and it is psychologically difficult to discard the sunk cost of all that art, but it would ultimately be better for the business and thus also the game. Plus we already know I+2 doesn’t mind throwing away beautiful graphic assets because of the new medal designs.

A “problem” for I+2 is that their art is almost always gorgeous and has incredible production value, but this also probably means it’s expensive to produce. On the other hand, we have art that would be unacceptable in even games with much lower production values:

This post is not a tangent as it is about the cost of creating and implementing content that could be used to generate content players will use and could generate revenue for the developers. Most new troops do generate revenue in some capacity as they promote spending gems. Glory troops cannot generate revenue directly and thus useless glory troops are useless not only to players but to developers.

@Lyrian I just remembered that the invasion events have holiday troops. So assets were created that will only be used no more than once a year and less than that if these events stop being once a month (since some events will skip some months that have holidays). Furthermore, these troops are not meaningfully different from the troops they replace.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think the devs broke even on the cost of creating this asset.

I+2 creates cosmetic content but, in their infinite generosity, provides them to the community for free instead of charging for it. We are blessed.