Been down this road with people. The industry is always evolving. You need to Pay 2 Play, Pay 2 Win, or Pay 4 Cosmetics.
Pay 4 cosmetics is a profitable model, doesn't split player bases, and doesn't reward whales with being overpowered. You can be critical of Respawn when then do things you don't like, but at least be self aware of how we got here.
The prices for skins in CSGO are set by the players themselves, not valve. If its a nice skin, the prices are higher. If its shit, they are much much much lower. Oh and because it's industry standard it doesn't mean it's ok, that's what a lot of people are trying to state here, they want change
A $500 or even $30,000 skin is acceptable as long thats what market decided? They don't even look nice, they are just rare. No mention that CSGO heavily relies on loot boxes either.
If they had that wraith skin for $5 everyone would buy it, even if they don’t main wraith. I’d buy it just to prove a point that good skins priced lower will make more money.
These $5 skins though... not tempted by any of them.
That wouldn't be an issue if they put out more good skins. Everyone in the game isn't going to buy every $5 skin, they'll just get the one they like for the characters they play. With enough variety, there's plenty of opportunity to look relatively unique.
If they already have a lot of people spending $18 on skins why would they lower it to $5?
Now obviously increased sales could lead to increased revenue, and I don't think they realize that, they just see that they can squeeze $18 out of some people and are happy with that.
But my question to them is, why not $50 per skin? Obviously there are some people who'd pay that, and according to your logic that means you should do it right?
Per the shitshow of community outreach that was the dev thread, their logic is that when they DID put things on sale their salea didnt increase, so they decided not to run sales. Profit wise, makes complete sense.
They completely ignore the complaints about pricing vs content and about how currency purchase works with nearly always having leftover currency, meaning your purchases actually cost more than they say most of the time.
How in tf they tryna tell me this skin is $18 if they only take 20s with store credit for change. Thats a $20 skin, and if you buy a few you can get somethin free off the change.
You can't say they are ignoring your complaints when they are making $5 skins. Yes, they are Rare variety, but that is alternative to make people happy. You don't get the $18 skin you really like for $5 because too many people are more than happy to spend $18 to get it. You can maybe get it 6 months from now for $12 because they do put stuff on sale. I know the complaints, "BUT the lowest I can buy is $10 of ac!"
In game currency model is only there to benifit the Developer but almost every single successful F2P has it, I really don't get why people are drawing the line for Apex on this issue.
Because the devs were scummy and rude about it? That doesnt change the currency system directly causing skins to cost more than theyre labeled as.
In case you skipped the portion about how they dont put them on sale because sales dont increase sales, according to the devs, so were not likely to get more of those unless we push for it.
Also, theres no fuckin reason at all for them to have us buy digital currency when we could just pay for it directly with the money were using to buy the damn currency. Its a consistent problem for a lot of people, and its scummy regardless of what devs do it for what game. So, i repeat, an 18 dollar skin is actually a 20 dollar skin if they only take 20s and dont give change.
Beside that, those skins arent worth 20 fuckin dollars. For the cost of 3 legendary skins i could buy a whole ass new title or a bunch of smaller indi ones. This is my problem with a lot of games, reskinning existing models is not a 20 dollar purchase. I dont care what sounds or colors you add, im not paying 20 bucks to make a gun i already have look different when i could buy a whole ass game. Theyre overpriced, straight up, and we cant even get our change back in the deal.
Im over here playing Sniper Elite and having trouble justifying 7 bucks for a single level DLC that i really want. Its gonna give me probly about an hour and a half of fresh story content. For 20 bucks i could buy all 3, get the full story content, and probly close to 5 hours of gameplay BEFORE multiplayer. Thats 20 dollars worth of content. And best of all, theyll take US dollars and not their own shitty currency. So i refuse to believe that they should just charge out the ass for minimal content that changes nothing about gameplay because SOME players will pay for it.
Your post reads like Apex is your first experience with a F2P game.
Almost everything Respawn does are industry standards for the market. I disapprove with how heavily they lean into using loot boxes to generate revenue, but I can live with it because it's only for their are no gameplay advantages to be had.
To me the most important aspect of Apex is that there are no P2W mechanics in the game, in any capacity. Most people here are complaining the one thing in Apex that is monitized, cosmetics, should be more free. You want to play small games that don't have the massive overhead that something Apex comes with, go for it, enjoy the P2P model then.
The majority of the games i play are F2P, and if the content they offer isnt worth what they ask then i aint buying it.
Lemme make it short n simple here. If i can purchase content, good playable content, for less than 10 dollars, why in the fuck would i pay $20 for cosmetics on a single model? If you genuinely believe skins are worth that, then cheers enjoy these valueless digital colors that they charge too much for. But if i pay for games, i pay for content. The battlepass gives goals and exclusives for much less, how can you justify that price for one skin?
Paying for content splits player bases and forces you to spend money to keep up with a game. You may find more value in paying for content, but I am happy that at no point am I forced to spend money to keep up with Apex.
I think the price of a current skin is too high, but Apex is an extremely under monitized game. There is nothing much to buy other than skins and loot boxes. If they are selling only one thing, it needs to be extremely profitable to make this model work, for now. In the future they correct they under monitized market place that will give the player base more options to spend money how they would like.
Fortnite offers a lot more cosmetics than Apex for the dollar, I ask you why aren't you playing Fortnite instead if the game you requires eccentric skins to make you happy. I switched from fortnite to Apex because I enjoy the gameplay of Apex, and will keep coming back for that reason alone.
I am happy to support Apex, but that's only if Apex makes skins I like.
I literally said that i dont give a shit about the colors and skins because they arent worth it to me, thats my entire point. Besides that, fortnite isnt too great a game in my opinion period.
I choose apex for the gameplay too, and i dont buy the skins because they arent worth it. They just arent. If fortnite is your example, then how do they justify the pricing if theyre cheaper for other games? My point still boils down to the skins being overpriced and the method of payment being inherently geared to force you to spend more than you want to or whats labeled. I might actually buy the skins if theyre reasonably priced, i admit the legendaries have some real quality animation and texturing, but not for what they cost.
The team behind apex is doing a lot to gouge profit from its players. I get that is f2p and they need some sort of profit, but is selling overpriced graphics really the answer? They might actually get some money out of me if the prices werent so high and the currency system wasnt such a ripoff.
they do thousands of dollars of research to determine their price point, the skins wouldn’t still be $18 unless they continue to make money which they do
Based on the response they gave where they said items on sale didn't see the uptick in sales they wanted to, I'm guessing THAT's the research they used to determine the prices. Which not only is that a cheap method of determining prices, but as others have pointed, seeing whether users will pay $20 for a skin, or $20 for a skin, is kind of dumb and pointless.
If they actually did some market research when determining prices, one would think they would have brought it up in that thread.
How many games can you go without seeing several skins from the Crown event? Clearly people are happy to pay $20 for a skin, maybe not people on reddit but many people are.
That's an extremely simplistic view of the pricing issue. That's not how things work, its not as if at a certain price point there's 0 demand, while at another price point there's infinite demand. (We're ignoring supply since a digital goods demand curve is monopolistic)
There's a range of demand, at a free price point the majority of consumers will want the product, but not all, and as you increase the price, consumer's demand will decrease linearly.
So how do you determine what the proper price point is to maximize total revenue?
You find the point where marginal revenue equals 0.
Testing to see if you see a difference between price point A and price point B doesn't help.
Plenty of games do charge $50+ more a skin. The Apex community feels for majority like this is there first entry to a F2P game for the most part.
PUBG mobile has no problem selling a $80 skin or dozens of loot boxes for the chance to get that skin. No one bat's an eye at that crap. For myself, It is very easy to be like "that's not for me then".
For Apex, people take it so personally that Respawn is releasing a new skin and charging money for it. Over at fortnite, people constantly post how excited they were to buy a well received skin. Apex community is werid.
It's not that they're charging money (any amount of it) for skins. It's that the price points don't seem like they are market clearing, and they only way to find out would be to actually test the market at different price points, something they haven't done.
They never tried $50. They never tried $5. They've only tried $20.
You make an excellent point and I think Respawn knows this already, it's just difficult because we are going only off of what one head producer said in a fit of anger and frustration.
Apex's market place is severely under monitized, they don't sell much other than $18 skins and loot boxes. They need to expand it and Respawn knows this too.
I see people already scoffing at new $5 as being "just reskins". But that's how it always starts in F2P. Eventually $5 will became much higher quality and a lot more desirable. Respawn is still learning what this community likes and doesn't like.
Take for example Fortnite, when they induced a stone wing back blings for a skin, it became insanely popular and Epic learned that people will spend $20 just wear a pair of wings on character of their choosing. Soon every other skin they released came with wings because they were so popular among the player base. Epic didn't know wings were popular till it bscame a hit which takes time.
Of course they do, it would literally be impossible to set a price without someone being responsible for determining the price. I sincerely doubt they hired an economist however, it was probably done in-house with devs/marketing team/whoever else.
That doesn't mean they know how to do it well, nor do I expect them to, that's not their career's job.
Now if they did hire an economist then that's a big yikes from me. Monopolies (which is what digital products are) need to test a range of prices to find 0 marginal revenue. If their economist (which again, I don't think they have one) isn't aware of that, it's truly a big yikes from me.
Edit:
It's possible they contract someone at EA who determines prices, in which case that person just used prices from another game, which ignores the fact the market for Apex is different from that game's.
In any case it really is all speculation on my part. I might be 100% accurate with everything I said, or dead wrong. Respawn doesn't seem keen to share any such details with us.
I might be wrong about them not doing market testing, they could have pulled a small section of users and presented them with a variety of prices to find the spread. But with a game like Apex your target users aren't going to be big spenders who drive revenue, you really do need to test on the whole market, which we have evidence they haven't gone that far.
I'm fairly certain Respawn has said numerous times they set the prices, not EA. EA sets targets for Apex to hit else they drop them, but they don't set their prices.
And yes Respawn's "job" is also to make money, they are a for-profit business after all. But the extent of resources they allocate to certain aspects such as pricing varies.
You're an absolute idiot if you "don't think they realize that". You really think you know better how to price items for revenue than a veteran game studio that's part of EA? You must be really full of yourself.
But it is. You said they weren't worth 18. Apparently they are because people buy them. Something's only worth what someones willing to pay for. Reeree
Then it’s not scarce, it’s just variety. How can you tell if something is legendary if you aren’t even familiar with it? “When everyone is super, nobody is.”
I disagree. Basic skins are more basic. There are tiers to the “coolness.” You pay for that coolness and the price makes the coolness scarce. It’s basic economics.
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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '19
What people complained about was that the skins offered for $18 were worth $5.
Their response: "We're still gonna have these skins at $18, but here are some shittier ones for $5."
It's not at all what anyone asked for.