Account-bound Costumes?

[nestharus]

Blade & Soul is closest to Vindictus costume model. In my post, I state that those are like $32.00 a pop and they are character bound from the moment you buy them.

 

 

I hate to burst your bubble here on the rant that this game will die unless they reduce costume prices or make them account bound or something, but Vindictus is still going and making a profit, and it's living off of costumes. People make jokes that the only thing Vindictus releases are new costumes : P.

 

 

*edit*

from another post. Here is pretty much a complete list of games with account bound costumes. I bet you most of the people are coming from these games. For reference, WildStar is not account bound, but rather character bound, and that is a pretty new western MMORPG.

 

• World of Warcraft - Mounts & Pets are account-bound
• Guild Wars 2 - Costumes, pets, materials etc. are all account-bound
• Final Fantasy XIV - Same as above, account-bound

[nestharus]

2 minutes ago, NueHoujuu said:

The devs said in livestream that account bound costumes is a feature that no other region has, and that they would have to work with KOR to get it made.

I want to add on to this that the only MMORPG I was able to find with account bound costumes was Guild Wars 2, which is definitely not a Korean MMORPG : ).

 

*edit*

Also, I didn't double post... the message I quoted moved from before mine to after mine.. if you look at the quote, I am referring to the post after mine, lol......

[NueHoujuu]

The devs said in livestream that account bound costumes is a feature that no other region has, and that they would have to work with KOR to get it made.

 

PSO2 has account bound costumes. Technically, they aren't bound.

[nestharus]

Ok, so with PSO2, we're up to 4...

 

are any of these ncsoft or nexon games? Nope.

[Meerkat]

1 hour ago, nestharus said:

Eh, I've played most MMO's that have been released since EverQuest 1. Let's see.. when did cash shops start coming about. Well, I don't think it was Runescape. That operated on a subscription model. Back in 2012, they unleashed a cash shop. Let's see, their character bound costumes go for $7.00 to $12.00 on a super old school 2001 2D game. Let's see, 25,000 nexon cash is $25.00 USD. An outfit on sale in Maple Story, character bound of course, is $4.90. I'm not finding these free outfits you are speaking of in even the oldest MMORPGs around. What about EverQuest? Well, that didn't even have outfits. In fact, in old MMORPGs, you just wore your armor. Any older than Ultima and we're getting into MUDs.

 

I think the costume prices in this game are completely fair. It's also completely reasonable for them to not be account wide and even character bound upon buying them! The only MMORPG I can think of with account bound outfits that you can get for free is Guild Wars 2. That one is definitely a lone wolf in that regard.

 

 

Armours in most mmopergers are not purchased with real monies, can be reacquired and most importantly, are tied to progression.  Preventing items linked to progression from being traded makes sense, otherwise, players could just auction house to win and skip swaths of intended content.

 

Costumes are purchased with real monies, are not linked to progression and are intended to improve your experience.  Additionally, as they cannot be acquired by playing the game, than it only is logical that there is a means by which to reacquire them.  Putting this aside, having costumes as account bound makes economic sense as well.  Players with even rudimentary concepts of value on investment are going to extremely hesitant purchasing what is essentially a single use consumable, especially when the price is so high.  Just think for a second; for the price of the Valentine's costume, you can purchase any two Bethesda games ( not including Fallout 4 ) right now and have hundreds of hours of gameplay versus a single pile of pixels.  In that context, how stupid or rich would you have to be to still purchase the Valentine's costume?

 

You listing various games where cosmetics are character bound is a bad defense, primarily because you're essentially opting how you want to be taken advantage of when we can simply have a better system that doesn't use predatory practices.

 

Now of course some NCSoft Defense Force kid is going to jump in and try to give me a lesson on game development or economics or something and be mostly wrong... but let's just assume NCSoft switches to an account bound costume system and they actually are no longer making enough money due to loss of sales, which honestly, I can't imagine, but hey, whatev.

 

Easy solution:

 

Higher thoroughput.  Make more costumes so people have more costumes to buy.  Hell, you don't even have to make new costumes.  You can just perform palette swaps or provide variations.  Purple and blue?  Great.  Pink and white?  Even better.  This costume has a weird jug thing on the side.  Remove it for this other variation.  Barely increased effort, significantly more costumes.  Easy peasy, and you'll sell more as well.  I might not buy that purple and blue costume, but I will buy that pink and white one.  Some might buy multiple variations, and the whales?  Well, the whales are still going to buy them all because that's what whales do.

[PsychoticFlamez]

From what i'm aware of, on the CN version of the game, everything that is untradable is account bound. Thats what eventually will happen to this version as well. what ncsoft is doing, is spreading out content to make a better profit off the game during its early release, so instead of giving us everything the other version Has currently, they are slowly milking what they can, out of it. So it makes since too not implement this yet, since cn version of the game has this system during the silverfrost mountains content release.

[nestharus]

 

16 minutes ago, PsychoticFlamez said:

From what i'm aware of, on the CN version of the game, everything that is untradable is account bound. Thats what eventually will happen to this version as well. what ncsoft is doing, is spreading out content to make a better profit off the game during its early release, so instead of giving us everything the other version Has currently, they are slowly milking what they can, out of it. So it makes since too not implement this yet, since cn version of the game has this system during the silverfrost mountains content release.

 

Let me quote another post

 

Quote

I've played the KR, CN, and JP versions of the game. In all of those, the costume purchases are per-character only. There is no account-wide option in any of those regions.

 

Please, elaborate on this account bound you speak of. When did it become account bound? This post I quoted was only from a few months ago. It would have had to have been a very recent change. According to the streams from the na devs, no region has account bound costumes right now. Who knows, maybe the poster I quoted and the na devs are lying, but I'd like to see your source ; ).

 

I'm just saying people are complaining about something that's fairly normal in not just ncsoft MMORPGs, but Nexon MMORPGs, Aeria MMORPGs... really, pretty much any Asian MMORPG you can think of. It's also even semi-common in western MMORPGs O_o. People are complaining as if this game is committing a terrible act that no other game commits. This game is pretty much the first game I've seen to receive complaints about this and what it does is very common... it's like you are complaining about the F2P business model for being F2P.

 

 

Now, if people think that the idea of character bound costumes is dead and everything should be account bound in all newer MMORPGs, there's a discussion. However, calling the outfits in this game a ripoff and so on is just plain incorrect. The only things that are ripoffs in this game are weapon skins and dragon pouches.

[PsychoticFlamez]

he has obviously not played either of those versions, or did years ago. because right now some outfits are trade-able/account bound and even sell-able on the other clients, and purple weapons can be sealed with talismans to be sent through the mail to another character. this is being added to the game.

[nestharus]

I've tried looking all over the net for proof of your claim and the only thing I could find was that CN outfits only last 30 days.

 

Can you please link some patch notes so that I can translate them? Or link a video? Or something?

 

 

According to devs, no region has account bound outfits right now. According to posts from a few months ago from players that played these versions, they are not account bound. From a google search, I could find no other person stating what you said just now.

[PsychoticFlamez]

2 minutes ago, nestharus said:

I've tried looking all over the net for proof of your claim and the only thing I could find was that CN outfits only last 30 days.

 

Can you please link some patch notes so that I can translate them? Or link a video? Or something?

 

 

According to devs, no region has account bound outfits right now.

What you are asking is extremely difficult as I don't know Chinese or Korean. and don't currently have the cn version installed with the english patch but I suppose google will have to suffice.

[nestharus]

Ok, I just spoke with someone streaming live from the TW server on Twitch that speaks English. Difficult to find : ).

 

Here is what he said. Whether it is account bound or character bound depends on the outfit. The more expensive outfits are always character bound. The very cheap crappy outfits are account bound. This is true of ALL regions. This is why we have some confusion here, some thinking outfits are account bound and others thinking that they are character bound.

 

: )

 

So we now have correct information given to us from someone playing on a TW server at the same time that I am writing this post. They also happen to have a lot of outfits.

 

This is also where the pricing confusion of outfits other regions is coming from.

 

 

Welcome to the world of F2P. Enjoy your stay. Fyi, I am not a fan of the F2P model, but it is here to stay.

 

 

So uhm.. can we stop whining about this stuff now? : D

 

 

We need to get to the more serious issue of mirroring TW/CN Prem benefits so that we can offset the costs of dragon pouches and outfits. They get a daily stipend of hongmoon coins. Every time they login, they get some. They also get plenty of other great benefits. Now, we're going to get this "eventually" as new stuff gets patched in, but we could try to get this prioritized.

 

The other thing would be, and this would be relevant to all regions, getting rid of the 1-shot weapon skins. The weapon skin thing is a relatively new feature, but we could try and make it more like a costume and add a new spot for it ^_^. For that, we'd need the NA team to negotiate with the KR developers to see if this might be a better option than the current one : ). Now, people in the other regions do buy these weapon skins, including the special ones, and continue to buy them for each season, but not that many people buy them from my understanding. I think most people on every region are in agreement with me concerning the weapon skins ; D.

[Meerkat]

17 hours ago, nestharus said:

 

So uhm.. can we stop whining about this stuff now? : D

 

Never.  The business practices supporting this game are a disease upon the gaming industry.

[Luffs]

this is the reason why my Regium Corvus set is still sitting in item claim

[nestharus]

Eh, here. Decide for yourselves whether Blade & Soul outfits are cheap, normally priced, or expensive. These are other F2P MMORPGs. Trying to compare prices of a F2P MMORPG cash shop with prices of a B2P or Sub MMORPG cash shop isn't going to get you anywhere because they are on different models : ). Best compare a F2P MMORPG with other F2P MMORPGs to see where it really stands.

 

Elsword: $30 per outfit (aeria)

Vindictus: $32 per outfit (not including innerwear, which'll bump the price up to maybe ~$40 for entry cost) (nexon)

Dragon Nest: ~$32 per outfit? (saw one post, don't want to login and don't remember) (nexon)

PWI: $16-$30 per outfit (aeria)

Tera: $.60-$100+ per outfit depending on outfit. The $.60 ones are ones that are highly unpopular and being removed from cash shop, so don't get your hopes up : ).

C9: $6.80 per outfit (webzen)

Age of Wulin: $0.00?! in-game gold?! O_O.... (webzen)

Priston Tale: $.90 (hairstyle) (suba games)

 

 

 

Another thing to note is that we have 3 main publishers of Korean MMOs. These are Nexon, NCSoft and Aeria. Webzen has a little bit, but isn't that succesful. Suba does their own stuff and everything looks very old ; ).

 

 

From this, we can extrapolate three tiers of MMORPGs and their associated pricetags.

 

Tier 1: $15-$32 outfits

Tier 2: $5.00 - $10.00 outfits

Tier 3: free to $1.00 outfits

 

Blade & Soul is in tier 1 as a game, so it has tier 1 pricing.

 

 

I see a lot of people asking for $10.00 prices, which reflect a tier 2 game. Tier 2 games are generally games that people thought might do well but ended up flopping. These including C9 and Raiderz.

 

Tier 3 games are either extremely old/niche or very poor.

 

 

Tier 1 games are things like Vindictus and Tera. Blade & Soul is also indeed a tier 1 game.

 

 

I've played and know of a lot of MMORPGs all the way back to ones that were made in 1998. I know extremely niche ones like Furcadia and Priston Tale as well as mainstream ones. I'm also very familiar with MMORPG pricing over the years from western MMORPGs to Eastern MMORPGs.
 

 

I promise you. You aren't getting ripped off with the costumes.

 

 

I also promise you. You are getting ripped off with the premium membership, the dragon pouches, and the weapon skins.

 

 

You're directing your anger at the wrong thing : )

 

 

I'm sure that this post is going to be ignored and I wasted my time writing it, but... it makes me feel better ^_^.

 

[Meerkat]

7 hours ago, nestharus said:

Eh, here. Decide for yourselves whether Blade & Soul outfits are cheap, normally priced, or expensive. These are other F2P MMORPGs. Trying to compare prices of a F2P MMORPG cash shop with prices of a B2P or Sub MMORPG cash shop isn't going to get you anywhere because they are on different models : ). Best compare a F2P MMORPG with other F2P MMORPGs to see where it really stands.

 

Elsword: $30 per outfit (aeria)

Vindictus: $32 per outfit (not including innerwear, which'll bump the price up to maybe ~$40 for entry cost) (nexon)

Dragon Nest: ~$32 per outfit? (saw one post, don't want to login and don't remember) (nexon)

PWI: $16-$30 per outfit (aeria)

Tera: $.60-$100+ per outfit depending on outfit. The $.60 ones are ones that are highly unpopular and being removed from cash shop, so don't get your hopes up : ).

C9: $6.80 per outfit (webzen)

Age of Wulin: $0.00?! in-game gold?! O_O.... (webzen)

Priston Tale: $.90 (hairstyle) (suba games)

 

 

 

Another thing to note is that we have 3 main publishers of Korean MMOs. These are Nexon, NCSoft and Aeria. Webzen has a little bit, but isn't that succesful. Suba does their own stuff and everything looks very old ; ).

 

 

From this, we can extrapolate three tiers of MMORPGs and their associated pricetags.

 

Tier 1: $15-$32 outfits

Tier 2: $5.00 - $10.00 outfits

Tier 3: free to $1.00 outfits

 

Blade & Soul is in tier 1 as a game, so it has tier 1 pricing.

 

 

I see a lot of people asking for $10.00 prices, which reflect a tier 2 game. Tier 2 games are generally games that people thought might do well but ended up flopping. These including C9 and Raiderz.

 

Tier 3 games are either extremely old/niche or very poor.

 

 

Tier 1 games are things like Vindictus and Tera. Blade & Soul is also indeed a tier 1 game.

 

 

I've played and know of a lot of MMORPGs all the way back to ones that were made in 1998. I know extremely niche ones like Furcadia and Priston Tale as well as mainstream ones. I'm also very familiar with MMORPG pricing over the years from western MMORPGs to Eastern MMORPGs.
 

 

I promise you. You aren't getting ripped off with the costumes.

 

 

I also promise you. You are getting ripped off with the premium membership, the dragon pouches, and the weapon skins.

 

 

You're directing your anger at the wrong thing : )

 

 

I'm sure that this post is going to be ignored and I wasted my time writing it, but... it makes me feel better ^_^.

 

 

Blade & Soul isn't what I'd call a Tier One game.  It's severely lacking in a lot of areas that I would consider necessary for a Tier One game.  Maybe a Tier One Point Five.

 

None of those publishers have good reputations in the west, and Aeria is very bottom of the barrel, wouldn't wipe my ass with that STD-laced trash, dumpster tier.  Aeria is Tier Negative One.  That whole bracket is entirely constituted of steaming turds.  Does NCSoft belong in there?  Do you want NCSoft to belong in there?  NCSoft, iirc, did manage to pick up some worst publisher of the year award or something some time back.

 

You're essentially defending the practices that are delegating these publishers to third string, maybe second string at best, contenders in western markets.

 

Planetside 2 cash shop unlocks are account wide.  Sure, they aren't fully modeled and textured costumes, but they were a lot cheaper, regularly went on sale.  The secret:  thoroughput.  There are like a million camos in the store.  Since they're cheap and unlocked across your account, players snap them up.  I think I had a half-dozen, if not more.  And nobody really complained about their pricing.  It helped that their premium service was pretty damn decent.

 

NCSoft could pull the same trick:  Color palette / pattern swaps and alterations.

 

Then, let's talk Destiny.  Now admittedly, you need to pay upfront for Destiny.  But you can get the Legendary edition for as low as $30.  That gets you completely caught up to current content.  That $30 gets you a much more beautifully realized, detailed world with lore, superior ( but significantly less ) PvE content and tons of PvP content ( tons of modes ).  And again, cash shop items are unlocked across your account.

 

And here's the kicker: TONS of players complained about Destiny's cash shop, but when you compare Destiny's cash shop to Blade & Soul, it is bargain priced.  That should give you an idea for how little we care for cash shops, especially ones with severely shitty pricing.

 

Another example:  Nexon's newest game, Dirty Bomb.  FPS aimed at the west.  Cash shop.  WE HATE IT.  To be fair, it's not so much due to the pricing, but how it's structured ( RNG boxes, though given how Dirty Bomb works, it's unavoidable ).

[Kadirra]

I think what NCSoft needs to figure out is if they want a whole lot of microtransactions or just macrotransactions from the 'whale' community. I would think that the 'whales' would still buy plenty and more, but the greater majority of players might purchase at a lower price margin than exists now.

 

I guess they did their number crunching and from the model chosen, they went with the 'supported by the few whales' model.  I would hope they would see that they could get just as much money lowering the price margin a bit, because more might pay at a lower price. If the costumes are going to be single-person only, they might lower the price to around five dollars each, or less.

 

They could make money on having an in-game barbershop similar to SWTOR as well, as long as they kept the prices reasonably low to encourage repeat business.

 

So do they want it to be only supported by the whales, or do they want it to be a microtransaction game where more people will buy things?

 

When they mentioned putting an item you had to /buy/ in the store to transfer a costume to another character, warning bells went off. This seems clear that they want it to be a whale-only game. Just my thoughts, though.

 

I could be wrong.

 

I would support account-wide costumes using the SWTOR model of purchase one, then unlock for account with extra. But not just a one-time transfer fee.

[GnatB]

On 2/14/2016 at 4:14 AM, nestharus said:

Blade & Soul is closest to Vindictus costume model. In my post, I state that those are like $32.00 a pop and they are character bound from the moment you buy them.

 

 

I hate to burst your bubble here on the rant that this game will die unless they reduce costume prices or make them account bound or something, but Vindictus is still going and making a profit, and it's living off of costumes. People make jokes that the only thing Vindictus releases are new costumes : P.

 

 

*edit*

from another post. Here is pretty much a complete list of games with account bound costumes. I bet you most of the people are coming from these games. For reference, WildStar is not account bound, but rather character bound, and that is a pretty new western MMORPG.

 

• World of Warcraft - Mounts & Pets are account-bound
• Guild Wars 2 - Costumes, pets, materials etc. are all account-bound
• Final Fantasy XIV - Same as above, account-bound

 

1.  Wildstar: Wardrobe is account wide.  So yeah, costumes are effectively ACCOUNT bound.

2.  SWTOR:  Most store outfits can be unlocked to be account wide.

3.  RIFT: Wardrobe is account wide.

 

Pretty much every decent modern MMORPG has account bound store-purchased outfits.

 

Prices in all 3 games are sub $15 for outfits.  I can't check at the moment, but I believe they are mostly under the $10 mark.  (SWTOR I believe is around $10, and another $5 to make accountwide)

 

On 2/14/2016 at 4:33 AM, nestharus said:

Ok, so with PSO2, we're up to 4...

 

are any of these ncsoft or nexon games? Nope.

 

Guild Wars 2 was developed by ArenaNet, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft, just like Wildstar was developed by Carbine Studios, also a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft.

 

Both of which are account wide wardrobes.  So, uhm.  YEP.

[Naunet]

On 2/14/2016 at 6:14 AM, nestharus said:

from another post. Here is pretty much a complete list of games with account bound costumes. I bet you most of the people are coming from these games. For reference, WildStar is not account bound, but rather character bound, and that is a pretty new western MMORPG.

 

• World of Warcraft - Mounts & Pets are account-bound
• Guild Wars 2 - Costumes, pets, materials etc. are all account-bound
• Final Fantasy XIV - Same as above, account-bound

 

Rift. WildStar. SWTOR, for an additional fee (never played it, but that's my understanding). Possibly more that I am unfamiliar with.

 

[edit] I should have scrolled down. xD Gnat beat me! Haha.

[nestharus]

I would put ncsoft in the same category as nexon and aeria with this game. I don't expect anything more than that. As such, if you look at it like that, outfits are cheap : ).

 

Also, all of the games you listed have tacked on cash shops, and none of them started out F2P (if they even are F2P, some of the ones you listed weren't).

 

Tera is... well weird ; ).

 

 

Now, if you compare it to NCSoft's other titles, this one is definitely - . -. This title is more like any title you'd see out of Nexon/Aeria. So I guess that actually people that are used to ncsoft games and not nexon/aeria games would be the people raging. I'm actually used to nexon/aeria games right now, lol.

 

 

Why did  NC Soft decide to start taking the same approach as Nexon and Aeria? No idea. However, no one can argue that this game is pretty dern successful, even with its different from the norm business model.

 

The biggest difference is that the other games were developed with either B2P, sub, or a combination of the two in mind. This is NC Soft's first direct F2P game.

 

 

I think NC Soft is alienating  their base with this game, atleast in the West. The Nexon/Aeria players coming into it are ok with it. All of their loyal customers over the many years are not.

 

 

So rather than tackling outfit prices, why not tackle their business model and demand something that they've done in the past ; ). Perhaps they went F2P because they decided that this game wasn't even worth a sub, or worth being B2P.

 

I think NC Soft really dropped the ball here. This title is much lower quality than any of their other titles.

[SupportOrTroll]

So I personally feel ripped off and here's why.

when I played BnS on other servers wardrobe was free. Ok I get it NA will pay for it and it's totally in their right to exploit that. So every month I pay for the wardrobe (wish I could store weapon skin there but oh well), I bought tons of skins and turns out I'm not a fan of my Blade master in pvp. That's it? I wasted all that money? The skins are extremely expensive add monthly membership on top of it and still that's not enough. You have to buy it all again for your alt. 

 

I know I don't have to buy it, but I'm a big spender when it comes to games I like. I just feel like I deserve more then a big

"CENSORED".

 

Why can we make the wardrobe to be account bound? Cause some costumes are race specific? It sure didn't stop me from having Cerulean and Crimson outfit in the wardrobe. It's pretty simple they put an X on Crimson because I can't wear it. As simple as that.

 

Edited for grammar.

[Scythess]

Personally I would be inclined to spend more on costumes if they were account bound. Right now I have two costumes for my main, and Ill probably never buy another costume again unless they make something that Im completely in love with. My alts can go costumeless for all I care.
 Because I know that I will have a favorite costume, and probably only wear that one, the ones I bought before that will be a waste of money.

 

If I was able to send it to an alt however, they would no longer be a waste. Buying costumes that I liked could be sent to alts and swapped out at will. That doesn't sound as much like a waste to me. Guild Wars eventually made this happen and it was great, costumes were account bound and even your wallet was account bound so you didn't have to send money to your alts all the time.

 

SupportOrTroll has another even better point I think about the characters, if you delete them you lose your items? What the heck? Thats really stupid.

 

[Leo91]

Please make costume account bound. 

[ZerosuMetallium]

Absolute i agre, costiumes must be account bound and prices lower. For that price i can buy a full game. Costiumes are garbage you can easy get a new one. I love solution on Guild Wars 2, you have almost all account bound and its very good in my opinion. You dont must start all over again from 0.

[BeK]

Costumes should has been account bound from the jump.

[Apolenge]

I would also love Account costumes. Prices are waaay too high and honestly the fact that they're not is keeping me from buying more of them. I am a huuuuge fan of clothing (in video games, IRL my fashion SUUUUUCKS) and I am totally OK with buying tons of clothing in game. But aslong as it's bound to one character I am going to be VERY reluctant when it comes to purchasing clothing.