Item prices, price discrimination, no loadouts

(gloomyRequirement) #1

Ayyy

I kind of like this game, at least gameplay wise. Apart from the really well done optimization, the somewhat appealing graphics and like I said before - the gameplay - it’s good. But anything apart seems horrible to say the least.

I had to play for 9 hours to unlock 1 class, 1 30k class. This being before the earlier updates which improved money income. But I still get the feeling money goes really réally slowly. The classes are really expensive both with ingame currency as well normal money. 10 euro for 1 class, for a part of the content of the game. Why didn’t you instead sell cosmetics or weapons? Why did you have to lock actual gameplay content behind a pay wall?

Then, also mentionworthy, the price discrimination is quite real in this game. In US dollar the more expensive classes cost 9,99USD, in europe they cost 9,99EUR. That’s roughly 10% more expensive for european people. What do british people pay? Don’t tell me they have to pay 9,99 as well.

And lastly the fact that you cannot equip your own loadout is pure stupidity imo. Obviously it’s to stimulate the grind behind the stupid card system(which is in my opinion the absolute worst progression through unlocking mechanic I’ve ever seen in any game), but it really shouldn’t be. It would mean that in case you have a bronze card(or better) you’re either stuck with that loadout or you have to play at a relative disadvantage to equip a perhaps more fitting weapon for the current situation.

I mean who am I to judge your business model, but to me this one seems one of the greediest free to play attempts out there. I have played alot of f2p games including heroes of the storm, dota 2, LoL etc and none of require you to play as long to unlock a hero/class - only Heroes of the storm coming close(but that’s Blizzard, what did you expect).

(Ardez1) #2

Care to explain this one a little further? I’m confused by the “And lastly the fact that you cannot equip your own loadout is pure stupidity imo.”

What do you mean by your own loadout? A loadout you own? Because I know you can equip those… I have done it a ton. You can’t change during a match, which is true. Is that what you are talking about?

Then on the next part, what do you mean by this? “It would mean that in case you have a bronze card(or better) you’re either stuck with that loadout or you have to play at a relative disadvantage to equip a perhaps more fitting weapon for the current situation.”

Many people, before getting high tier cards with the weapons they want, will give up on the third augment and use Iron so that they get the weapons they like. Nobody is requiring that you use the highest rarity loadout you have. The third augment generally speaking isn’t that big of a game changer anyways. In the end, you choose what you play with from what you own.

And finally, Roughly how long does it take to unlock a character in LoL? Smite? Heroes? Dota2?

Thanks,
Ardez

(LifeupOmega) #3

They’re unlocked by default. :smiley:

(gloomyRequirement) #4

Care to explain this one a little further? I’m confused by the “And lastly the fact that you cannot equip your own loadout is pure stupidity imo.”

What do you mean by your own loadout? A loadout you own? Because I know you can equip those… I have done it a ton. You can’t change during a match, which is true. Is that what you are talking about?

Then on the next part, what do you mean by this? “It would mean that in case you have a bronze card(or better) you’re either stuck with that loadout or you have to play at a relative disadvantage to equip a perhaps more fitting weapon for the current situation.”

Many people, before getting high tier cards with the weapons they want, will give up on the third augment and use Iron so that they get the weapons they like. Nobody is requiring that you use the highest rarity loadout you have. The third augment generally speaking isn’t that big of a game changer anyways. In the end, you choose what you play with from what you own.

And finally, Roughly how long does it take to unlock a character in LoL? Smite? Heroes? Dota2?

Thanks,
Ardez[/quote]

I meant saying that you cannot modify your own loadout, it’s all in the cards by default. The fact that you cannot switch them ingame entirely is really clumsy as well. The developers put so much effort into getting players to “like” or at least buy the cards it’s ridiculous.

The latter quote of mine meant that some weapons are more advantageous in some situations than others. For example you’ve got 1 bronze card with a MSG, but you would want a shotgun for you’re playing in small corridors. Now you cán pick the shotgun, but you will lose all 3 buffs unless you got ánother card for the shotgun as well. It’s a really unfun mechanic imo, that vastly stimulates grinding or paying to win.

I disagree with the third augment not being a gamechanger. When you’re playing a competitive match players are supposed to be of equal skill, any edge is an edge that could grant you kills or objectives.

In LoL it takes about 1/7 of the time it does in Dirty bomb, but it has a much greater range of heroes to pick from and it’s thus necessary to have multiple quickly(for counterplaying obviously). In Dota 2 all heroes are free from start on(all hail Valve!), and in HoTs it takes about 1/3 of the time it takes in Dirty bomb.

(Ardez1) #5

Care to explain this one a little further? I’m confused by the “And lastly the fact that you cannot equip your own loadout is pure stupidity imo.”

What do you mean by your own loadout? A loadout you own? Because I know you can equip those… I have done it a ton. You can’t change during a match, which is true. Is that what you are talking about?

Then on the next part, what do you mean by this? “It would mean that in case you have a bronze card(or better) you’re either stuck with that loadout or you have to play at a relative disadvantage to equip a perhaps more fitting weapon for the current situation.”

Many people, before getting high tier cards with the weapons they want, will give up on the third augment and use Iron so that they get the weapons they like. Nobody is requiring that you use the highest rarity loadout you have. The third augment generally speaking isn’t that big of a game changer anyways. In the end, you choose what you play with from what you own.

And finally, Roughly how long does it take to unlock a character in LoL? Smite? Heroes? Dota2?

Thanks,
Ardez[/quote]

I meant saying that you cannot modify your own loadout, it’s all in the cards by default. The fact that you cannot switch them ingame entirely is really clumsy as well. The developers put so much effort into getting players to “like” or at least buy the cards it’s ridiculous.

The latter quote of mine meant that some weapons are more advantageous in some situations than others. For example you’ve got 1 bronze card with a MSG, but you would want a shotgun for you’re playing in small corridors. Now you cán pick the shotgun, but you will lose all 3 buffs unless you got ánother card for the shotgun as well. It’s a really unfun mechanic imo, that vastly stimulates grinding or paying to win.

I disagree with the third augment not being a gamechanger. When you’re playing a competitive match players are supposed to be of equal skill, any edge is an edge that could grant you kills or objectives.

In LoL it takes about 1/7 of the time it does in Dirty bomb, but it has a much greater range of heroes to pick from and it’s thus necessary to have multiple quickly(for counterplaying obviously). In Dota 2 all heroes are free from start on(all hail Valve!), and in HoTs it takes about 1/3 of the time it takes in Dirty bomb.
[/quote]

So how long does it take on LoL, HoTs and DB? 10 hours in game? 5? 20? I would really appreciate the math, as I don’t know how long it takes exactly in any of the three games :frowning:

(gloomyRequirement) #6

What use is there in me doing the math for you? I gave you an idea roughly. It took me 9 hours to unlock 1 single class in this game, which was a 30k one , so 1/7 is roughly 9*1.66=~15 hours for an expensive class. I am going to reduce 1/7 to 1/6, which means it’d take roughly 2,5 hours to unlock an average LoL hero(but there’re really cheap and really expensive ones). In HoTs it takes about 5 hours.

Dota has all heroes freely rotated at all times.

(Amerika) #7

See, the card system is similar to the unlock systems in other games. Lets take Battlefiled as an example. It can take a long time to unlock all the perks, weapon augments, weapons and even skills (You had to play a long time in BC2 before you could even gain the ability to rez in that game) just for one class. Dice made it grindy because they not only wanted to sell their microtransactions to unlock things faster but also create time investment which helps keep people playing.

Dirty Bomb takes a CCG-like approach to these unlocks. In DB, despite it not being a $60 game like mentioned above, you can get what you want quicker or it might take you just as long playing as BF. It’s kind of a gamble and it’s RNG based. I don’t mind too much since you get case drops pretty often and trading up isn’t awful since there isn’t a ton of cards. Pretty soon you’ll get the Bronze you want.

An argument could be made that you don’t like the RNG aspect or that you can’t pick your exact loadout but those loadouts are not only made to be appealing to potential buyers (this is a F2P game) but also balance reasons. And SD has already nerfed augments that were pretty powerful which made them less essential. Only a couple are really deemed absolutely necessary for some classes (Get-Up is the only one I can think of that is pretty much required).

So really it’s just an RNG based unlocking mechanic that is trying to draw in the CCG or even CSGO people who like the gambling feeling with the cards. Others want a more defined system where you know exactly when you’ll get something and can then use it with anything else. So yeah, that’s divisive but not unfair considering the precedent in other games that actually charge you $60 out of the gate.

The mercs are definitely too pricey. I think the credit earn rate is fine now after the most recent update. I love the new system in fact. But the actual money being charged for each merc at $10 is a bit on the high side.

(Ardez1) #8

[quote=“gloomyRequirement;21791”]What use is there in me doing the math for you? I gave you an idea roughly. It took me 9 hours to unlock 1 single class in this game, which was a 30k one , so 1/7 is roughly 9*1.66=~15 hours for an expensive class. I am going to reduce 1/7 to 1/6, which means it’d take roughly 2,5 hours to unlock an average LoL hero(but there’re really cheap and really expensive ones). In HoTs it takes about 5 hours.

Dota has all heroes freely rotated at all times.[/quote]

Ok, so then let’s drop that part and move to fractions of total content. There are currently 12 mercs in DB with an expected 20. So in those 15 hours you earn 1/20 of the locked content.

36 Heroes exist in HoTs, so 1/36th of the content compared to 1/3 the work

Over 130 champions(roughly) exist in LoL, so 1/130 of the content compared to 1/7 the work.

So moving on, to unlock all of the characters in all three games ~

If we are using DB as the base for these fractions, then it takes 20 to get all of DB

Then in LoL to unlock all it takes 130/7 (18.5)

And in HoTs it would take 12

BUT WAIT! We have messed up our math! Let’s take a closer look.

2 of the mercs in DB are free! You just get to keep them.

DB is actually 18, not 20, so each merc is 1/18th of the locked content. 5 of the mercs are priced at the 30k price, not 50k as well, so lets add that up to 150,000 credits, which would be 3 mercs at normal prices. For the sake of math let’s make that 18 a 16 to represent credit price. Each merc is now 1/16th of the game speaking in terms of credit value, or 16.

Wow, now LoL has the least content unlocked over the longest period of time. O.O

Let’s dig deeper in the cost of LoL champs tho, as they have variable pricing based on ‘Tier’

Using this thread http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2287799 for our maths

If you want the details, pop on over. In the mean time

That means that for 6,300 IP(New Champion Price)

Average # of games needed:
Over 75

Average time in-game:
Over 45 hours

DAMN! That is a lot of time. You said 15 hours for DB right? Well… Ouch. Including wins of the day in LoL becomes 57 games, 34 hours

There are currently 31 Champs at 6300 price point

35 at 4800

25 at 3150

21 at 1350

and 12 at 450.

Lets do the same match we did with DB then.

Damn, 280,500 IP for all of the non 6,300 IP champs. Total comes to 44.5+31 champs at 6,300 OR 75.5

So each 34 hours you get 1/75th of the content of LoL compared to your math of every 15 hours getting 1/16th the content of DB. So Roughly in the 34 hours of LoL you could get 1/8th the content of DB.

This is why math matters. If you’d like to correct anything above, feel free to do your own calculations. I intentionally didn’t do the DB calcs to prove a point.

(gloomyRequirement) #9

This is getting a bit autistic, but I’ll repute.

You realize that there’s more than percentual to total content differences here right? LoL has an ENORMOUS hero pool, you cannot just say “but durr durr you unlock only 1% of content per X hours!!!”. LoL makes sure there’s a good amount of variety, cheap heroes for new players - which allow you to properly counterplay and have the additional content to keep you going.

I don’t know how long it takes for LoL heroes to play unlocked precisely as I never really played the game. I did for a while, until I got my dota 2 key which I and my friends went to afterwards. If you read the entire thread his math is also kind of flawed. The average LoL game takes 30 mins, at 88 IP per match, Thats 6600/88/2=37,5 hours for the absolute most expensive hero. That’s bollocks and a mental amount of playing time, but it does come with the fact that you always have alot of content at your disposal even without unlocks(which Dirty Bomb doesn’t have).

Remember that Moba games like LoL also have a GIGANTIC amount of customization INGAME with it’s items. There’s no lacking variety in LoL as far as I am concerned, and especially not in Dota.

You cannot compare apples to pears. Even though I am aware now that my formulation in the initial post was poor - I should have said there’s a lacking amount of content for my taste(I am neither that kind of guy that has so much free time that he can unlock any classes regularly).

In other words, it was my mistake to directly take LoL and dota 2 as example considering they’re poor comparisons. My point however still stands, I think the classes take too long to unlock as there’s not enough variety for my taste. The class real currency pricing is way over the top.

(Ardez1) #10

Agreed that you really can’t compare these games. I was just trying to prove a point there. I have posted several times that you simply can’t compare them directly. However, I don’t think the in game pricing is over the top. It seems reasonable to me. With the new mission system you can earn a merc in a fraction of the time it would have taken before the Rhino/Kira patch.

(gloomyRequirement) #11

Hmmwyea I suppose you’re right. I still kind of get the feeling there’s lacking content.

I mean, I don’t know if you played Brink(picked it up when it was 1,50eur on steam lol), but there’s a shit ton to unlock there. Now I really wasn’t expecting that to be back in this game, but they also removed the ability for the player to create his own custom loadout. It’s all part of the, in my opinion, stupid card system.

But welp, that migth be just me as well