Hongmoon Outfits & NC Response

[delaMorai]

On 2/1/2016 at 3:30 AM, TaruV said:

"We wanted to jump in here and let you know that being able to trade costumes across an account is something we are in fact working on. Once available, this will be a new purchasable consumable that can be used on an already purchased Hongmoon Store character bound cosmetic, which will allow it to be mailed to another character on your account.

 

So they want to solve a problem which is related to money with a problem that involves money? I mean... they want us to buy a consumable to mail our cosmetics to other characters? They want us to spend money just to being able to move outfits. Sorry, but that's really disgusting.

 

/Edit:

I really love this game. However, I will not buy any more NC coins if they don't stop trying hard milking as much money from stupid ideas like these. They are limiting so many things which doesn't need to be limited. I'm 100% sure that there are enough people who would love to spend money and support the game's future, but not like this. 

[BattleHymn]

I bought my first costume today and it will be the last I buy until they make them account bound.

[Meerkat]

Costumes are clothes.  For fellow Blade & Soul players, outside of Blade & Soul clothes are these weird things that you wear.  You can put them on.  Then you can take them off.  You can give the clothes you've taken off to anybody you want and they can then wear those same clothes.  I know, right?  Crazy!  Whenever I try to let someone else wear my clothes in Blade & Soul, a giant dialog box saying: "This item cannot be traded" appears out of nowhere, and I get whacked on the wrist.

 

Anyway, unless English has fundamentally changed, Hongmoon "costumes" are not costumes at all.

 

Remember in Harry Potter when Hermoine brews that potion so Harry and crew can change their appearances?

 

This is exactly what the Hongmoon store sells.  Calling them costumes implies that these items can, at the very least, be transferred within your own account freely, which is very likely intentionally written false advertising to con less informed players into purchasing single use items they initially think will be account bound with some way of transferring the item between their characters.

 

So let's start a petition to move all "costumes" into the consumables section.  The icon should be changed into a potion and the item name should be:  "Appearance changing potion: <ITEM_NAME>" with a prominent notice stating:  "This is a single use item that cannot be removed from this character."

 

The way the costumes should be handled is like this:

 

You can purchase a single character costume for say $4, and that costume is locked to the character it was purchased for.  Before you purchase, you get a notice that informs you that this costume will only be unlocked for a single character, and a blurb about whatever warranty you get.

 

You can also purchase an account bound costume for say $10.  Then you gain access to a miniature Lyn tailor who has a miniature shop in all the cities, and whenever you want a costume on any character on your account, you go to the tailor and she puts on her miniature reading glasses and goes to her miniature workstation with miniature spools of thread and miniature needles and makes you a new one!  Or you just double click the costume or something in the Hongmoon store or whatev and a costume appears in your inventory probably.  I mean, really, both work fine.

[Prototypemind]

$4 for a costume is a joke. I don't know of any game that prices them that low even for single characters unless they just look like butt =p I'd be insulted if I put in design time and saw that's how my work was valued. Maybe during sales or something, but as a normal price even for single chars that's just silly.

[Mokiki]

16 minutes ago, Prototypemind said:

$4 for a costume is a joke. I don't know of any game that prices them that low even for single characters unless they just look like butt =p I'd be insulted if I put in design time and saw that's how my work was valued. Maybe during sales or something, but as a normal price even for single chars that's just silly.

No need to be insulted because you where hired as a designer get regular pay, thus all the designs you do belong to the company you work for and they can value them however they want :P

 

As others have mentioned I really like the idea of making the wardrobe free for everyone but premium members can access their outfits from all characters. To be honest this is a really elegant solution.

 

[GnatB]

31 minutes ago, Prototypemind said:

$4 for a costume is a joke. I don't know of any game that prices them that low even for single characters unless they just look like butt =p I'd be insulted if I put in design time and saw that's how my work was valued. Maybe during sales or something, but as a normal price even for single chars that's just silly.

 

 

$4 if you sell a million is $4,000,000.  Still not worth your pay?  Did an analysis like this on outfit DLC for offline games, but let's assume an outfit takes a man-week of work.  40 hours.  (almost certainly on the high side).

 

Lets say the average artist making said outfit makes $100,000 a year.  (Definitely on the high side)

 

Let's say there is an extra $50,000 per year per person for facilities/management/electricity.  (Also definitely on the high side)

 

Outfit therefor costs $2885 to make.  If they price it at $4, they only need to sell ~700 to break even.  We know there are over a million players.  That's 0.07% of the players would have to buy it.  They could sell it far cheaper and still make a nice chunk of change.  May even make *more* money if enough additional people buy it at that lower price.

 

Now, sure.  This is a F2P online game, so the example breaks down somewhat.  They don't just have to cover the cost of making the outfit, but also the cost of running the servers, developing the game, etc. etc.

 

(Incidentally, where's your outrage that all the items obtainable in-game are valued at $0?)

[Naunet]

2 hours ago, Nanashi said:

So they read that the community complains about high outfit prices as well as the inability to trade said outfits between characters in one account. The best solution they come up with is to charge extra... O.o

 

Lol yup. NCSoft's "logic".

 

I hope it bites them in the ass.

[Meerkat]

4 hours ago, Prototypemind said:

$4 for a costume is a joke. I don't know of any game that prices them that low even for single characters unless they just look like butt =p I'd be insulted if I put in design time and saw that's how my work was valued. Maybe during sales or something, but as a normal price even for single chars that's just silly.

 

That's how it worked in Planetside 2.  You could either purchase a single-use camo that could only be used in a single loadout or as an account wide unlock full camo that could be used on as many loadouts and characters as you wanted.  The single-use camo was very cheap.  Later, when they took single-use camo's out of the game, they reduced the cost of full camo's, and if you owned the single use camo, it was upgraded into a full camo.

 

And $4 for a costume is not a joke.

 

It works like this:  The designers have already been paid for their work; the company's profits are not their concern.  Their concern is to make a good product.

 

Furthermore, $4 is better than no dollars which is what you get when people decide they'd rather not spend twelve AMERICAN REAL MONIES on a single use potion.  Consider the opportunity cost here.  In fact, let me give you a couple of scenarios:

 

You could buy five single-use potions that can never be transferred, OR you could instead plop down that cash and preorder about any AAA game you want.  For example, Tom Clancy's The Division.  This also happens to be almost the cost of the entire Ubisoft Humble Bundle which will net you The Division, a bunch of other AAA games, a decent shirt and a bunch of pretty good coupons that can save you up to $40 each.

 

You could buy one single-use potion, OR you could wait for a Steam sale and buy one AAA game or two to four Indie games.

 

You could buy twenty-single use potions, OR you could buy an entire freaking netbook and have an additional computer.

 

99.9% of financial advisors say a pile of pixels is pretty crappy value when compared to any of the listed alternatives.

 

Keep in mind the USA is relatively affluent; twelve bones might be a meal or two for you, but for individuals living in other countries, that could be substantially more as a percentage of disposable income.

 

Additionally, if you're willing to put up with paying $12 for a single-use potion, you're just telling the devs and publishers you're an easy mark who will accept more disrespect and abuse.

 

Plus, having prices so stupid high that most players just start waiting for sales is also stupid.  Sale mentality is a thing and it's good for nobody.  The company's revenue stream becomes less consistent, customers are upset when there aren't sales or when the sales aren't good enough, etc., etc., etc.

[khynnea]

On 2/2/2016 at 8:45 PM, Shmoof said:

Um... I don't want to be that guy but... the Master Pack costumes are account bound and can be mailed between characters on the same account... It's not as if they can't do it. They clearly can. 

I can understand why they aren't doing it though. Everyone would only buy 1 or 2 costumes and just switch them between characters instead of 1 or 2 costumes for each character. It seems to me that they're trying to figure out how best to monetize the transfer process without receiving too much backlash from the community. They're probably trying to strike up some kind of balance between their loss on outfits not being sold and players saving money by transferring their outfits. 

 

But this isn't true necessarily. I for one will not buy *any* costumes at the current pricing, and with them not being account bound. I have 7 alts. I won't do it. I would rather run around making do with what I can get in game than spend a single cent with things being overpriced and not alt-friendly.

 

However, if they were alt-friendly, I would pursue collecting the entire catalog. See how that works? I'm not going to go down the path of "which character gets which outfit." How do I spend 15$ for something on one character and then not be able to use it elsewhere, or worse, have to spend it again. It's bad enough already having to farm the stupid scorpion 7x3 days to get the outfit for everyone. I'd RATHER be enjoying new content.

 

The game is not friendly to alts. This has caused me to leave MMOs before. It's their design decision. I don't want to have to pick and choose.

 

If they want to cater to those with deep pockets who are going to spend money on their single character or pick a single costume here and there across multiple characters that's their decision. It's also mine not to spend money here if they can't balance the cost-benefit a bit better. It *is* better to gear things towards accounts than characters in the long run, and selling me a "consumable" for 5$ that lets me mail it to an alt for a one time use (which given the price points in the store is all too easy to imagine) just is another rip-off.

[Telzen]

21 hours ago, Raenef said:

People that say "Oh, it's a free game they need to make money somehow", Don't you guys realize that they would make more money if they just give the people what they want? I seriously don't think that making the outfits to be account bound would make them lose money, it would make people be more willing to buy them.

That's debatable. There is a large portion of f2p players that won't ever spend money on the games they are playing. That's why companies price their cash shop items high to begin with.

[Telzen]

15 hours ago, Ildur said:

I agree that the consumable will be acceptable IF it makes the outfit tradeable within one's account forever. Otherwise, it's basically just a cash grab that only about 100 people will use once and nobody else.

 

I also agree with the idea that outfits should be account-wide to begin with. These are digital goods, people: NCsoft or whomever makes them incurs NO REPLICATION COSTS. They only have to create the models ONCE before they can sell their customers an unlimited ammount of them. Don't let them rob you just because 'they have to make money'. If you are using that mentality, you might as well not complain the day someone steals your wallet.

 

After all, the thief 'had to make money somehow'.

Obviously the outfits should be cheap as hell since they don't cost much to make, not like they need money to run the game or anything. Digital goods can't be compared to physical ones. Go over to Apple or Amazon and tell them to lower all the prices on their music and movies you can download, see how that works out.

[Nanashi]

I just don't understand what Nexon is thinking err Ncsoft, they even added rng boxes that have soulstones and moonwater stones in them.

[Prototypemind]

7 hours ago, Mokiki said:

No need to be insulted because you where hired as a designer get regular pay, thus all the designs you do belong to the company you work for and they can value them however they want :P

 

As others have mentioned I really like the idea of making the wardrobe free for everyone but premium members can access their outfits from all characters. To be honest this is a really elegant solution.

 

I don't want $4 outfits because I don't want to see everyone else in the game with the same thing I pick. Variety is the spice of video games. If they were that cheap I'd outside of sales I'd just let them go by the wayside or stick to HM coin and not support the game. Planetside, as someone mentioned elsewhere, really isn't a good comparison look-wise. Regardless, I'm sure NCSoft has done the metrics, and judging by what I've seen here and elsewhere the market will bear much more than $4/costume and as this is F2P I think it's justified.

 

Yes, a million costumes at $4 a piece is 4 mil, but at $10 a piece you've more than doubled your revenue and still satisfied your customers. This isn't a charity. Everyone's free to voice their opinions and I'm simply giving mine that $4 makes little sense from any perspective but a consumer wanting to keep prices low just for the sake of doing so. If you don't think it's worth the money then speak with your wallet and don't buy.

[EbonYxi]

Or they could just stop trying to be cheapskates and do what their little offshoot group did in Wildstar. Carbine made a global account wardrobe that you added costumes too and took costumes out of. Just make the wardrobe account wide instead of per character, but still only store one costume at a time for each type in the wardrobe, so there is still reason to have multiple at times if you have characters that you want to wear that outfit on. This gives you account wide outfits, but still allows NCSoft to make some profit off of multiple outfit sales for those who don't care for the inconvenience.

[Mokiki]

18 minutes ago, Prototypemind said:

I don't want $4 outfits because I don't want to see everyone else in the game with the same thing I pick. Variety is the spice of video games. If they were that cheap I'd outside of sales I'd just let them go by the wayside or stick to HM coin and not support the game. Planetside, as someone mentioned elsewhere, really isn't a good comparison look-wise. Regardless, I'm sure NCSoft has done the metrics, and judging by what I've seen here and elsewhere the market will bear much more than $4/costume and as this is F2P I think it's justified.

 

Yes, a million costumes at $4 a piece is 4 mil, but at $10 a piece you've more than doubled your revenue and still satisfied your customers. This isn't a charity. Everyone's free to voice their opinions and I'm simply giving mine that $4 makes little sense from any perspective but a consumer wanting to keep prices low just for the sake of doing so. If you don't think it's worth the money then speak with your wallet and don't buy.

Sure but it all comes down to what kind of revenue you are striving for. I am not supporting the people saying "oh make this cheaper and get more money". NCSoft mosty likely has done market research and knows what people are spending on games like this. But in your example it is still wrong to assume that by not having a price of 4$ but 10& the revenue is doubled. You also have to consider people having a certain money threshold. The people who will buy a 4$ outfit won't necessarily buy the 10$ one.

 

So NCSoft can pick their poison:

Sell 100x 10$ outfits to make 1000$

or

Sell 250x4$ outfits to make 1000$

 

In the end people have the right to voice their concerns and wishes about the prices and features they get. I am in the same camp as a lot of people in this thread. I am premium at the moment but I still think wardrobe should be free available to everyone, as well as items from the cash shop should be account bound. Like outfits or additional skill tree pages. So all I can do is tell NCSOFT that.

[Meerkat]

43 minutes ago, Prototypemind said:

Yes, a million costumes at $4 a piece is 4 mil, but at $10 a piece you've more than doubled your revenue and still satisfied your customers. This isn't a charity. Everyone's free to voice their opinions and I'm simply giving mine that $4 makes little sense from any perspective but a consumer wanting to keep prices low just for the sake of doing so. If you don't think it's worth the money then speak with your wallet and don't buy.

 

If you're selling a million units at $4, you sure as hell aren't selling a million units at $10.  You can probably buy your favourite music CD for $10.  You can buy two year old AAA games and blockbuster blurays for $10.  Between a single-use costume potion and any of those items, the pile of pixels is the inferior option.  It's opportunity cost.  Where else could I have spent that $4 or $10 if I don't use it on buying an extremely restricted digital good.

 

$4 @ 200k units is better than $8 @ 100k units.  Why?  Because the people who spent $4 are going to go, "I feel like I got pretty good value out of that" and buy again and again and again.  A fair amount of people who spent $8, on the other hand, are going to go, "wow, I didn't know this was only locked to a single character" and "that was kinda expensive, if I buy again, it'll have to be really good" and "shit, I bought some dress thing that I don't even like that much now when instead, I could've gotten Galactic Civilizations II which is on sale right now on Steam for $6 instead; god, I'm stupid" and not buy again.  These are digital goods.  You don't have to deal with fluctuating prices of commodities or something.  They are infinitely re-creatable for free.

 

Payday 2 is a dying game because of one really bad, extremely unpopular patch.  Sometimes, that's all it takes.  Public perception matters.  When will the Hongmoon Store cross that line?

 

Your mentality is the reason why publishers like Activision continue to shit all over gamers day in and day out.  The Hongmoon store is one of the most aggressively hostile, anti-consumer online services I have ever seen and you're rolling over for them.  There once was a day when huge swaths of gamers were upset that Bethesda had the audacity to charge $.99 for horse armour.  How times have changed.

[Prototypemind]

Their price points are pretty much the norm. You're free to dislike it and you're free not to spend. I won't put money into their RNG boxes, ever. I won't pay for $30 costumes. That's my prerogative. But I think $4 is a ridiculously low price point. NCSoft has been doing this for years. If $4 were the optimum point to sell at they would see it there. You can rant all you want, but no, I'm not the reason for companies taking advantage of players. Players who support companies who take advantage are the reason for it, like the players who have already spent hundreds on the RNG boxes that just came out.

 

I look at it from a business perspective, and while you can argue that players would be more satisfied at $4 and I argue $10 works, neither of us has the numbers to back it up directly. What I can infer, however, is that as companies continue in general to charge more than $4 in almost every well known title, and often far, far more, that the majority of players willing to spend money are willing to pay at the higher level and not the lower.

 

Clearly a few of you are very angry about this. Take a chill pill and get over it.

[Meerkat]

12 hours ago, Prototypemind said:

I look at it from a business perspective, and while you can argue that players would be more satisfied at $4 and I argue $10 works, neither of us has the numbers to back it up directly. What I can infer, however, is that as companies continue in general to charge more than $4 in almost every well known title, and often far, far more, that the majority of players willing to spend money are willing to pay at the higher level and not the lower.

 

$4 is just an example and is as arbitrary a number as is the current pricing.

 

You've not considered the business perspective; not a single thing you've uttered has given any indication thereof.  All you've spoken of is your opinions as a consumer.

 

Opportunity cost.  Generating positive public perception.  Creating brand loyalty.  A happy customer is a repeat customer.  A customer you've spitefully stung for a quick buck?  That individual should rightfully take their business somewhere else.

[Fuz]

On 2/1/2016 at 3:30 AM, TaruV said:

Once available, this will be a new purchasable consumable that can be used on an already purchased Hongmoon Store character bound cosmetic, which will allow it to be mailed to another character on your account.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Goddammit, they have no shame.

[2501]

On 2/1/2016 at 9:30 PM, TaruV said:

This tells me they do listen to player input and gives me hope that this MMO might be worth sticking with.

 

 

That's in incorrect assessment.

 

They use player feedback, and put it through their monetization grinder.

 

Thus exits the result: A bloody mangled mess.

[GnatB]

9 hours ago, Prototypemind said:

Yes, a million costumes at $4 a piece is 4 mil, but at $10 a piece you've more than doubled your revenue and still satisfied your customers. This isn't a charity. Everyone's free to voice their opinions and I'm simply giving mine that $4 makes little sense from any perspective but a consumer wanting to keep prices low just for the sake of doing so. If you don't think it's worth the money then speak with your wallet and don't buy.

 

Learn about demand curves.  Price goes up, you sell less.  So no, you haven't doubled your revenue.  Depending on the curve, it's quit probable you reduced it.  If only 300,000 buy at the $10 price, you only make $3,000,000.  And instead of a million satisfied customers, you have 300,000 satisfied customers, and 700,000 pissed off ones that wish the price was lower and have likely left for a different game.

As for these prices being the norm?  No.  They're not.  Sorry.  Stop playing Nexon moneygrabs and play some GOOD MMO's.  Listing the top 4 F2P MMO's, (according to gamesradar) Rift, SWTOR, Wildstar, Guildwars 2).  NONE of them have prices anywhere near these prices.  Most are in the $5-10$ range for *accountwide* outfits.  SWTOR is probably most expensive at ~$15 to get an accountwide outfit.

[Prototypemind]

56 minutes ago, GnatB said:

 

Learn about demand curves.  Price goes up, you sell less.  So no, you haven't doubled your revenue.  Depending on the curve, it's quit probable you reduced it.  If only 300,000 buy at the $10 price, you only make $3,000,000.  And instead of a million satisfied customers, you have 300,000 satisfied customers, and 700,000 pissed off ones that wish the price was lower and have likely left for a different game.

As for these prices being the norm?  No.  They're not.  Sorry.  Stop playing Nexon moneygrabs and play some GOOD MMO's.  Listing the top 4 F2P MMO's, (according to gamesradar) Rift, SWTOR, Wildstar, Guildwars 2).  NONE of them have prices anywhere near these prices.  Most are in the $5-10$ range for *accountwide* outfits.  SWTOR is probably most expensive at ~$15 to get an accountwide outfit.

You're willfully ignorant if you think that there is only one demand curve that fits models for selling digital good. Price and demand aren't inversely related in all cases by any means. As far as SWTOR, the most expensive outfits like all others also require an additional fee to unlock per toon or across your account. GW2 outfits run around $8-10, as do musical instruments and a lot of other items in the game.Regardless, you're free to express your opinion, but don't try and tell me that you know how the returns look for NCSoft. The prices we see are similar to what's seen in this game elsewhere. Do you not think there might be issues if players on their other releases checked and saw that we're only paying $4 an outfit when they're paying much more? There are adjustments for each market, but it would be idiocy for them to price their items that low and tacitly say that that's all their worth.

 

Some of you are so worried about being as cheap as possible that it's not even funny. If you don't like the pricing then don't buy, but don't try and tell me or anyone else that we're not allowed to accept the pricing. It's fine as is. Assuming that they handle the account sharing item well then on top of that we get something that isn't available to players in all versions of the game. Not sure where all the butthurt is coming from but I'm done listening to it.

[Wiitigo]

I'm on the side where I think the Wardrobe should be account wide. Now I have a few ideas how to get this to happen and how NCSoft can still make money doing it.

 

1st: Right off the bat anyone who bought the Master Pack before release should get an account wide wardrobe.

2nd: Premium Membership will get you the wardrobe (just like it does now), but if you want it account wide you need to buy a certian item from the store to unlock it.

3rd: FTP players have no wardrobe, but can buy a certian item from the store to unlock the wardrobe and also buy the other item to make it account wide.

 

This will make the NA/EU community happy and still make NCSoft money in the long run. Also if they feel that since outfits are now account wide they need to raise the price of some I'd be ok with that as well. I (and many others) would be more willing to purchase said outfit from the store if I new I'd be able to wear it on all of my characters.

[khynnea]

2 hours ago, Prototypemind said:

Some of you are so worried about being as cheap as possible that it's not even funny. If you don't like the pricing then don't buy, but don't try and tell me or anyone else that we're not allowed to accept the pricing. It's fine as is. Assuming that they handle the account sharing item well then on top of that we get something that isn't available to players in all versions of the game. Not sure where all the butthurt is coming from but I'm done listening to it.

 

You're wrong. I'm not concerned with being "cheap as possible." I'm concerned with utility, relative value, and how I play games. I am concerned with voicing my opinion in a rational and constructive fashion, and I'm well aware of how the controlling interest (eg, company) is likely to behave. It doesn't preclude me from expressing my opinion or how I will control my funds. If they don't want to do user-centered design and want to rely on monetization over player enjoyment that could ultimately drive greater optimization of revenue that is their choice. I'll go spend my time and money elsewhere.

The only reason I'm bothering with feedback at all is that the game has redeeming qualities, eg, I find it fun.

 

It would be likely excessively rude to say "no one asked you to listen in the first place," civil discussion and exchange of ideas is great. However, when people come out in droves to say "if you don't like it don't do it" as a response to offering feedback to a company, unsolicited or otherwise, it supports the notion that people should just roll over and take it with or without lube in life. Frankly our world suffers from enough apathy as it is, we don't need more people silencing our opinions.

 

If you want to accept the high pricing, then spend your money. That is of course why the pricing is as high as it is in the first place. Those of us who won't pay those prices will leave the rest of you to pay even more prices because we couldn't come to a more reasonable consensus in the marketplace, and I imagine you all will be somewhat irrationally happy to see us go.

[TaruV]

@Darkwingz
"Is this going to be that much of a problem if we have to spend $1-$5 a costume unbind?"

 

Yes, because adding a recurring cost to an account binder defeats the whole purpose of the thing. If swapping an item around is going to end up costing as much as buying a second copy, that option will be almost useless. It would only be good for switching mains permanently or deleting a character or something like that.

@2501

 

In order for player feedback to be put through monetization grinder, it must be processed first. The fact that the account binder is even in the works is encouraging. We can sit around all gloomy and brooding like 90s comic book anti-heroes, but I think trying to communicate is ultimately more productive, even if it all ends up ugly.