WIll There Ever Be a "Sale" in the Console Stores?

Gameplay Chat (PlayStation 4/Xbox One)
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So, I love the game, and, while there aren’t a ton of things, there are a handful of things I would buy from the store… if they didn’t seem so absurdly overpriced. The “balance” in this game is all out of whack as far as value to physical currency ratio go. I won’t get too far into the fact that the gem casket or whatever it is costs $100… crazy. I can’t imagine there has been a single one of those ever sold.

However, back to my point. I would LOVE to purchase some things, but can’t justify paying the price of a full AAA title for, say, the deathknight armor I would love to purchase.

Do we think, or are there future plans (don’t need a date, as i know that would kill current purchases in the store until that date) that there may be a half off sale, or something of that sort? Or maybe even just a huge restructure of the pricing?

To me, if tings were 50 - 75% of the price they were right now, I would probably drop $75 in a heartbeat just to get some things. However, I can’t rationally justify spending such high amounts of money on a single “pack” on a f2p game.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% fine playing the game WITHOUT buying anything, for free… but I also would be more tempted to purchase items if they were cheaper. Perhaps a version where you strip out all of the “bonuses” of extra traitstones and keys and offer a reduced cost version of the main item in each pack… ANYTHING that would lower the prices and get me to purchase more.

Look at it this way:

You have an item priced at $50. You sell 1,000 of them in a month, you make $50,000
You have that same item priced at $20, you sell 5,000 of them in a month, you make $100,000

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The Death Knight armor is most definitely worth it (if you intend to play for awhile).

Frankly I think it’s the single most valuable purchase you could make for this game.

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True, but that’s side-stepping my point.

I’m talking about EVERYTHING being overpriced (for the most part) and that there would be many more sales, and most likely much more revenue, if they brought the price down.

If that’s not in their overall plan, then perhaps a sale or something that isn’t running “all the time” that would bring the prices down to something easier to swallow.

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When they do run a sale, it’s usually just on gems sadly.

But understandable since they know the price points they can live with.

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Usually it’s a “bonus gems” sale where you get extra gems with any gems purchase. Or they introduce some new, really high value purchase like the Growth Packs.

I think a lot of F2P games avoid traditional sales these days b/c it leads to players not spending unless there’s a sale. You’ll see a lot of less successful games running a sale every other week, which they do b/c otherwise no one spends money.

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Yes bonus gems, my apologies. Thank you Studs.

I think you’re absolutely correct about that. Actually now that you mention it, I can’t think of a single one that does so frequently.

Also at this point they’ve already been selling for a long time at this price point, why change it for less?

Unless of course no one was buying it at that price, which I obviously don’t think is the case here.

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because of my original math.

if 1000 people buy the deathknight armor at $50/pop, that’s $50k
BUT
if 5000 people buy the deathknight armor at $20/pop (MUCH easier to impulse buy), you make $100,000

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@Sirrian could give you an answer much better than we could. I know they have said in the past that it’s $50 because of all the extras that come with it. Deathknight armor really is worth every penny.

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I’m not saying deathknight armor, in my eyes, is the only single item in the entire store worth purchasing entirely (due to everything else being absolutely, terribly overpriced), I’m saying that even though it’s still the only thing to slightly justify its price, it’s still terribly expensive for a f2p game and I’m betting they would get tons more sales if they lowered the price.

You guys are correct, perhaps a sale would not be best, or they only have a “5-year anniversary” sale or something, so that people aren’t holding out for the next one and they make it quite clear that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

But really what this gets at, is that it would be more profitable for them to lower their prices to things that would actually allow people to impulse buy

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as it is, I love that they give us so much to do for “free”. However, If I’m looking at purchasing the deathknight armor, or Nioh, I’m going to purchase Nioh. That’s where my money is going. However, if the price was lower, say $20, or even $25, then I could justify it not being the same price as a AAA title that just came out.

I’m not saying I don’t want to support the devs for their awesome game. I do. But I’m still a consumer who has to decide where to put my dollars, and currently the way the store is set up, I can’t justify the prices for what is received. I’m betting I’m not the only one (I may be the “minority” in the more hardcore forums, but I can guarantee I’m not out of the entire player base)

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Not at all. I’m sure there’s quite a few that might feel that way, and I’ve seen some post as much.

I can only say that I haven’t seen any price lowering since I’ve been playing.

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And sorry, to rally back here. I assume the way the devs have the store set up now, they are making money, or else the game would not be here. However, I’m just saying I could see them making so much MORE money if they moved more of the items down into the “impulse” range.

That’s for the things such as armor, troops, and traitstones.

The dollar to goods ratio for things like souls, gems and coins is obviously archaic and/or someone insane made those. I can get “$50 worth” of gems in a day from my guild. So, again, to get more purchases out of those categories they definitely should lower the price on those types of commodities.

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The problem is that F2P games don’t actually work the same as traditional retail. Something like 1-5% of people will ever spend on even the best F2P games, so there’s a hard cap to how much you can scale sales by discounting the product. Further, 10% of players that will ever spend (i.e., 0.1% of all players) traditionally account for 50%+ of revenue. The net result is that higher price point items and exclusives tend to be the main source of revenue and success is traditional based on building an economy (and all the high-value IAPs to support it) that only a very small fraction of players can afford.

In real world terms, what you’d be more likely see is that you’d lower it from $50 to $20 and only 2k people would buy it and thus you’d end up with less total revenue. And, as I already said, if you put it on sale once, it can create a race to the bottom where players will never spend unless there’s a sale. You could thus see a 'hangover effect" where players spend less after the sale and you actually end up breaking even. So all you’ve really done is get it into the hands of more players that might have bought it at some point and actually driven extra revenue.

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There’s another really important point I don’t want to gloss over: Because the majority of revenue is driven by players that spend a large amount of money on the game, these players are very discerning and tend not to be “impulse shoppers”. They are “value shoppers”.

What this means is that they’re perfectly content to buy a $100 item if they perceive it as a good value. Thus, creating systems that support RNG mechanics (like chests) and introducing new opportunities to spend on big ticket items like Deathknight Armor, PtG, etc. is traditionally the best way to continue to drive spending by these players. Yes, a sale can get them to spend, but it tends to be much less effective than you might think, and per my previous comment, putting things on sale tends not to drive a lot of incremental revenue.

I’m not one of these big spenders, though I have dropped some on Gems; however, I know we have some on the forums, and I suspect they’ll echo this sentiment.

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I see your point, stud. And i have conceded that a “sale” may not be the best way to go about things for the reasons you have mentioned (unless, of course, it was a “once-in-a-lifetime” sale such as for a 5 year anniversary or something, so that people weren’t inclined to just “wait around” for the next one, as there most likely wouldnt be a next one).

However, the bigger thing here then is that the prices are, quite frankly, too high for a f2p game. I have never played, nor seen, a f2p game with such a trend of $20 and upward items. with many being $30, $50, and some even $100 purchases.

Look at games like Candy Crush and it’s 1000 alternatives, or Pokemon Go. They’re consistently some of the highest grossing games, and they have tons of $0.50, $1, $5 purchases. Sure, they have some of their $20+ purchases, but those are few and far between, and definitely not the majority.

People are inclined to part with the money if it doesn’t “feel” like they’re spending a lot. Even though it will quickly add up over time. You’re right, there are always going to be those hardcore spenders that are going to dish out money. But, there is such a wasted potential for revenue by having things priced so high.

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I can also attest to this as well.

When I was running my online game, I had purchases of $3, $5 and yes some purchases all the way up to $100…

I usually sold between 500-1000 of the $3 purchases monthly, few hundred of the $5, and maybe 1 or 2 of the $100…

I also agree the pricing on some of these items for no “Guarantee” in what you are seeking, is absolutely crazy. I would never buy the Typhoon of Keys for $100. I would spend $20 to get a card I want though. I would then be very upset if I purchase a card I want and it ends up being nerfed to the point its worthless and/or power creep of next few cards dwarf it into oblivion.

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I imagine the gems for 15 days, maps for 15 days, souls for 15 days transactions sell quite a bit. For one thing, it’ll get you the first 2-3 vip levels easily, and you’ll get small enough boosts that the game doesn’t seem quite as difficult as before. And even if that’s all someone purchases, it’s still paying around the same amount as you would an indie game for playing gems of war, and developers flourish well enough with that as it is anyways.

So I imagine GoW is doing well enough with everything else as well, they can say they’re comfortable with it.

Myself, I keep thinking “Man, VIP 5 would be awesome”…then I remind myself it’d cost roughly the price of two full AAA games to get that, and I just laugh at my silliness for ever considering it.

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I buy the ‘daily gem’ packs periodically, not because I need the gems, but just because it is an affordable way to support the devs a little bit. I’m up to VIP 3, and would love to get to VIP 5, but I know exactly what you mean. My wife and I each have our own accounts, and I try to keep things even, so for both of us to get to VIP would actually be $260, which is like buying Fallout 4 (or the equivalent) 4 times. We’ve played GOW a ton, so it probably wouldn’t be an outrageous amount in terms of $/hr played, but it just feels like so much.

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I guess I should say that there are two approaches to profit in F2P games:

  1. A casual games that drives an enormous amount of users into the game and makes money by generating small purchases from a fraction of players that add up b/c of the massive volume of users. This is the Candy Crush model. They still don’t monetize a ton of players, but the pennies add up when you’re talking about 500 million players. They also generate great money off of ads (in part b/c Apple/Google don’t get their 30% of that money and the ad companies don’t take as big of a cut).
  2. “Midcore” games that drive much smaller numbers of users and make money by generating large amounts of spend by a few hardcore players. Clash, Game of War, etc. fall into this camp. They’re at the top of the charts b/c they use the crazy amounts of money players spend on the game to buy more players via ads. (That is, they turn their revenue into more users and thus get crazy numbers of users, only a few of whom will spend, but when they do it’s crazy amounts.) Gems of War falls into this camp.

The unfortunate reality is that Gems of War can’t be Candy Crush. It just isn’t the kind of game that appeals to a wide audience. It thus has to be the latter type of game if it’s to have any chance of success. The dev team actually leaves a ton of money on the table by not pushing the monetization more aggressively like the aforementioned games in #2. But that’s their choice – they seem to care as much about the kind of game they’re making and the community of players as they do about the profit.

The best way to see this is to compare Marvel Puzzle Quest or the more recent WWE Champions. Their systems are much more punishing than Gems of War, which means they generate a lot more money per user. They also have big brands on them that drive a lot of users into the game and make it cheaper to run ads. The end result is that these games are able to perform really well on the market while Gems is very niche, is nowhere to be seen on the charts, and doesn’t have a good path out. As I see it, they either have to (a) be satisfied with where they’re at and hopefully drive enough revenue to not get closed down, (b) risk drastically shifting the economy and alienating their players in the hopes of making up for it later on, or (c) make another version of the game that takes queues from these other games in terms of IP and/or economy design. We’ve seen some of option b, but mostly option a, and that seems like the “safe” option. Ol’ whats-his-face seems to know what he’s doing.

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20

I have to weigh in here, for several reasons.

  1. I was a F2P player who never intended to spend any money on this game.
  2. I am now VIP lvl 5.
  3. I have voiced this EXACT opinion over and over again via these forums, (just search price point @efh313)

The bottom line as I see it is this, although it seems to make PERFECT logical sense to me as well, the devs have ZERO intention of lowering the price point on the IAP. Clearly, the business of GoW is working for them and they are content. Despite my attempts to get them to remove the RNG “goodies” from packages and just allow me to purchase the actual “new content”, it is not something they want to do.

That being said, somebody a long time ago made a point that got me thinking and buying the Deathkinght Armor. You feel ok, buying a AAA title because it comes with a certain expectation of quality and value over time. Meaning every dollar you spend translates into entertainment minutes and a AAA should provide more ROI then a F2P game right?

Well, in the time I have been playing GoW, I have purchased and stopped playing Star Wars Battlefield, No Man’s Sky, Mortal Kombat XL, Madden 17, and FFXV (still playing this actually, great game). My point is, I realized a long time ago that I was devoting far more time to GoW and genuinely enjoying it. That made the investment more than justified in my opinion. If you like this game and see yourself spending 200+ hours matching gems, BUY the Deathknight Armor! You wont regret it and it IS a way to thank the devs for providing you a AAA game experience in a F2P vessel.

And if you keep playing long enough… you might just wind up VIP 5… though its actually closer to 3 AAA titles to get there! :wink:

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