What is the logic behind the (lack of) costume availability?

[Smo]

I really don't get it, why not just make all the costumes available? the demand is there. When it comes to a business and making money, a central part of success is for supply to meet demand.

 

It makes no sense to create an artificial lack of supply when it comes to costumes. NCsoft is literally sitting on a massive resource with over 1000 costumes, and they aren't taking advantage of it at all. They only rotate a few costumes every 2 weeks. The same static costumes have been in F10 for years now. it makes no logical sense.

 

@Hime you guys could be cashing in like crazy from costumes, but simply aren't. and instead keep trying to "nickle and dime" people in ways that are detrimental to the game and probably result in a loss of money due to player loss. What's the logic behind it? Like yeah, the new thread about letting players vote on what costume to come back is a very tiny step in the right direction, but it's still not properly utilizing the massive resource of costumes that you guys could be cashing in on.

[Nemises]

This is at least the 3rd topic about this. Yet our publisher hasn't reacted to one of them. Like the last time I just say: time limited buying possibilites is not economical. Just look at other games with tons of skins that are avaliable 24/7 and the publisher makes hardcore money with it. Guess pay2progress money is more worth than money from cosmetics.

[rekirei]

True! For instance I only see 3 costumes on that pole list that people actually wanted & the rest are like base costume recolors lol

Idk when they're gonna realize most people care a lot about cosmetics/character appearance/costume collecting in mmos & just want the chance to obtain stuff they actually want, its like free money...hello?? just put it in the shop?? What do they actually lose from mass rotating costumes/accessories instead of leaving the same old ones in there for centuries .

Edited March 26, 2020 by rekirei

[Cailexta]

Yes, please! I would like to change and buy fashion whenever I want to!

[Vexthal]

Check this link, they want us to vote for which outfits to replace the years old permanent selection.

 

 

This is awesome, i really hope its not a one time thing and we are stuck for years again.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Vexthal

[KzE]

They wont make purchasable all at the same time to avoid cherry picking. Only the rotation helps to sell the less wanted ones.

[Grimoir]

9 hours ago, Smo said:

you guys could be cashing in like crazy from costumes, but simply aren't. and instead keep trying to "nickle and dime" people in ways that are detrimental to the game and probably result in a loss of money due to player loss. What's the logic behind it? Like yeah, the new thread about letting players vote on what costume to come back is a very tiny step in the right direction, but it's still not properly utilizing the massive resource of costumes that you guys could be cashing in on.

Its not that simple. I believe it has to do with the lets call it "business model". To put it simple, with rotating costumes they have a "predictable" income they can count on every rotation (take it with a grain of salt). Now since they as a company have monthly / quarterly goals in terms of income they need to make, this is a good and controllable base.

If they made all of them available at once, it would spike the numbers now, but they would have much less income in the periods after, and if they don't meet their goals, it looks bad in the eyes of investors. that's how i see it at least, because i cannot find any other constraint into not releasing more costumes except the ones with licensing issues.

Players are one thing but they also are a business to make money and....like it or not business decisions will always take priority over player wishes / demands.

 

I would prefer they expanded that costume list more because i am missing a lot of costumes in there that i saw players asking for on forums.

[Smo]

4 hours ago, KzE said:

They wont make purchasable all at the same time to avoid cherry picking. Only the rotation helps to sell the less wanted ones.

except it doesn't help to sell the less wanted ones. if people don't like it they don't buy it.

 

 

3 hours ago, Grimoir said:

Its not that simple. I believe it has to do with the lets call it "business model". To put it simple, with rotating costumes they have a "predictable" income they can count on every rotation (take it with a grain of salt). Now since they as a company have monthly / quarterly goals in terms of income they need to make, this is a good and controllable base.

If they made all of them available at once, it would spike the numbers now, but they would have much less income in the periods after, and if they don't meet their goals, it looks bad in the eyes of investors. that's how i see it at least, because i cannot find any other constraint into not releasing more costumes except the ones with licensing issues.

Players are one thing but they also are a business to make money and....like it or not business decisions will always take priority over player wishes / demands.

 

I would prefer they expanded that costume list more because i am missing a lot of costumes in there that i saw players asking for on forums.

honestly I think they do it because they think it creates an incentive for people to buy them while they are there for a limited time.

But with the sheer amount of costumes, what actually happens is people see tons of costumes they want in wardrobe, but come to the realization that at 2 costumes rotating per 2 weeks that it could take years before the ones they like are available, so people just say "screw that, i'm just going to play something else instead of waiting years to finally make my character look how I want".

 

lets do some simple math. lets just say there's a flat 1000 costumes that come from the ingame store.

at 2 costumes per 2 weeks (or 4 costumes per month), that's only 48 different costumes available per year.

1000/48 = 20.83.

that's 20.83 years to go through 1000 costumes. You think someone wants to potentially wait almost 21 years if there's one costume they really want badly? hell no.

 

that business model is honestly not thought out at all. they could be making so much more money easily, if they just applied a few brain cells to thinking about it.

 

players come and go, a lot of them don't stay around for even 1 year. most of them would probably buy a lot more costumes during the time they are around if the costumes were actually available. by limiting the availability all they are doing is lowering their profits significantly along with making the game less enjoyable for the players who care about cosmetics (which in bns is actually quite a few). the huge amount of costumes is one of the few things bns really has going for it that other games don't have, but it's ruined by the lack of availability. the current business model is a lose-lose situation. nobody wins, not ncsoft and certainly not the players.

Edited March 26, 2020 by Smo

[KzE]

24 minutes ago, Smo said:

except it doesn't help to sell the less wanted ones. if people don't like it they don't buy it.

It helps. My wardrobe is full of outfits, what i wont wear anymore, because there are better ones. But you dont know, what will come or when will come something back.

[Grimoir]

Honestly they should do events where every so often there would only be costumes in the f10 deals for example for a week or a weekend.

[Nemises]

5 hours ago, Grimoir said:

Its not that simple. I believe it has to do with the lets call it "business model". To put it simple, with rotating costumes they have a "predictable" income they can count on every rotation (take it with a grain of salt). Now since they as a company have monthly / quarterly goals in terms of income they need to make, this is a good and controllable base.

As they are still developing the game the predictable income could come from new costumes they bring out in the quater. In addition players join game and quit the game before the costum they wanted has been to the store even once. The easiest way to sell a product is to include emotions and short term desicions, there's a reason that the handsome snacks are at the cash register in every supermarket. BnS doesn't even need "costume advertisment" like they do it at the moment. The best advertise are the players themselves running around, being seen by other players thinking: cool stuff, i want to have that too. After that they go to the cash shop and... oh the costum isn't there. When will it be there again? No one knows? Okay then I stick to my old one and NC just missed the chance to sell a product. Even from a point of view of long term income it is economical wise a bad decision.

5 hours ago, Grimoir said:

If they made all of them available at once, it would spike the numbers now, but they would have much less income in the periods after, and if they don't meet their goals, it looks bad in the eyes of investors. that's how i see it at least, because i cannot find any other constraint into not releasing more costumes except the ones with licensing issues.

There would be defenitly a spike, but there would be also many people who just buy 1-2 costumes in a month, just to have a new look. Actually it is possible to break the spike down by not releasing them all at once, but let's say 50 every month? That's at least 1.5 years of releasing old costumes in the shop, until the point there are only new ones left to be released. So there are stategies to handle such a thing.

 

I guess other publishers/developers just pay better psychologists.

[Grimoir]

22 minutes ago, Nemises said:

In addition players join game and quit the game before the costum they wanted has been to the store even once.

But this is nothing the publisher should be concerned about. If a player stops playing and misses a costume, well tough luck, wait till it returns. Its not their fault you decided to take a break so they should not be concerned with the fact that a costume you wanted was available.

Also we do not get that ,many new costumes. Maybe a total of 10 a year at most. Making all of them available would still be a bad choice imo. Increase the costumes that rotate in and out, and make sure costumes return after a X weeks cycle would be better.

 

[Nemises]

3 minutes ago, Grimoir said:

But this is nothing the publisher should be concerned about. If a player stops playing and misses a costume, well tough luck, wait till it returns. Its not their fault you decided to take a break so they should not be concerned with the fact that a costume you wanted was available.

It is not the only advantage, you gave this one too much attention as it is one of a several advantages. The package is what makes it a viable decision. Plus I didn't talk about players taking a break, coming back and seeing that they missed the rotation. I'm talking about players leaving the game forever. The economical interest of a game is to make as much money as possible, right? There it is gone, by the many players that would have spent several hundred bucks for costumes, but never had the chance in the last 2-3 years of playing with the current rotation system.

10 minutes ago, Grimoir said:

Making all of them available would still be a bad choice imo.

Yet I miss the marketing argument to supply this hypothesis.

 

I can't see a logical reason for the artificially reduction of the costume accessibility yet.

By the way I also think that the costum "income" is nowadays a really small percentage of the total income regarding trove, hongsil and rng boxes.

A game with around 8-10k players in the west (at least the number players assume in this forum) and a static playerbase that's getting smaller and smaller makes a costum rotation even more obsolete. 1/8 of the players that will play in half a year won't even play now, while the other 1/8 of the players that will leave can't spend their money on costumes they want to have now.

[Hime]

Thanks for the feedback. This is our first cosmetic change out in the HM Store in a long while. Seeing the current cosmetics have been on there for YEARS, it is definitely time to freshen it up. I believe we'll add more costumes later on (as in not take years to do it) as a semi-permanent addition.

[moveZneedle]

59 minutes ago, Hime said:

Thanks for the feedback. This is our first cosmetic change out in the HM Store in a long while. Seeing the current cosmetics have been on there for YEARS, it is definitely time to freshen it up. I believe we'll add more costumes later on (as in not take years to do it) as a semi-permanent addition.

Any chance we will ever get Trove outfits in store rotations again?

As much as i want Butterfly im not willing to let rng decide wether i get it. Money dont grow on trees :|

 

It was so much better when the trove outfits felt like an early access and not a premium one..

[Arohk]

4 hours ago, Hime said:

Thanks for the feedback. This is our first cosmetic change out in the HM Store in a long while. Seeing the current cosmetics have been on there for YEARS, it is definitely time to freshen it up. I believe we'll add more costumes later on (as in not take years to do it) as a semi-permanent addition.

Is it true that you must pay a good fortune to NC Korea to be allowed to sell the good costumes because of licence rights, and thats why we never get the good ones but those barely anyone wants?

Edited March 26, 2020 by Arohk

[Hime]

4 hours ago, moveZneedle said:

Any chance we will ever get Trove outfits in store rotations again?

As much as i want Butterfly im not willing to let rng decide wether i get it. Money dont grow on trees :|

 

It was so much better when the trove outfits felt like an early access and not a premium one..

I'd like to see the older ones come back but Butterfly is quite new so it'll likely remain fairly exclusive.

59 minutes ago, Arohk said:

Is it true that you must pay a good fortune to NC Korea to be allowed to sell the good costumes because of licence rights, and thats why we never get the good ones but those barely anyone wants?

Some licenses are region restricted and then there are some we outright just cannot sell or offer in our service. 

[Grimoir]

4 hours ago, moveZneedle said:

Any chance we will ever get Trove outfits in store rotations again?

As much as i want Butterfly im not willing to let rng decide wether i get it. Money dont grow on trees :|

 

It was so much better when the trove outfits felt like an early access and not a premium one..

Trove / rng box costumes have NEVER been in the store. Because that would outright upset everyone that spend money to get a exclusive costume.

As for butterly, we did get it already before this trove it was an rng box back then or a previous trove so its quite an old outfit

Edited March 26, 2020 by Grimoir

[Smo]

On 3/26/2020 at 10:55 AM, Hime said:

Thanks for the feedback. This is our first cosmetic change out in the HM Store in a long while. Seeing the current cosmetics have been on there for YEARS, it is definitely time to freshen it up. I believe we'll add more costumes later on (as in not take years to do it) as a semi-permanent addition.

thanks for the reply, freshening the costumes would be great! although a full overhaul of the costume monetization would be much much better. my second post in this thread (and Nemesis replies too) explains that in more detail than my first so I hope you read it!

Edited March 27, 2020 by Smo

[Dezra]

Just make the Trove outfits customizable and later release the non-customizable one in the store or add some subtle particle effects, give the trove outfit legendary tier lettering while the store one is purple tier, anything to differentiate the trove and common version. 

Edited March 28, 2020 by Dezra

[Ellena]

On 3/26/2020 at 4:55 PM, Hime said:

Thanks for the feedback. This is our first cosmetic change out in the HM Store in a long while. Seeing the current cosmetics have been on there for YEARS, it is definitely time to freshen it up. I believe we'll add more costumes later on (as in not take years to do it) as a semi-permanent addition.

I'm glad we are finally looking forward to a new f10! I missed out of the superfan outfit and I'm not sure if it was a trove exclusive or not but I'm really hoping it would be released in the cosmetic store!