Why is everything so expensive?! (real $$)

[jolyonb]

So, 1.1.6 was released today, and we finally have the full game available! Yay!

 

But... why is everything so expensive? Seriously, I don't have a problem with dropping you guys a few dollars here or there, but...

 

The base game to play was $25 (US). Ok, this is a bit expensive for an app game, but it's on par with the card game, and there is a free to play option. No complaints here, we now have everything that was included in that purchase!

 

Character alts are a big schtick in this release! People are excited! Why are the two bundles $30 (US) each? That's more than the game cost to buy, and for fairly minimal changes!

 

It's nice that we can now purchase dice, but the basic dice bundle starts at $20 (US), and goes up to $40!! Individual dice can be as much as $10 each. For something that is *entirely* cosmetic to the game, this seems ridiculous. If dice were $1 each, I might splurge on a few, maybe $2/3 for the nicer ones, but this pricing scheme is kind of absurd. Given that dice don't change the game experience at all past some colors, I really find these overpriced, and am much less inclined to support the product.

 

[kdl88]

I don't understand what they are doing price wise. It costs more for these digital dice than it does real ones! No way in hell I'll be buying any of that stuff at those prices.

[Whiteicaru]

Well, look at it like this, buying a specific dice is probably gonna be costly as they have a chance to come in treasue chests so instead of trying your luck with chests now you can pay and arm and a leg for a certain one you want, id say thats fair

[Hannibal_PJV]

And the company needs some ways of making some real money. If I have to ques, there has not been enough real money moving so far...

Have you seen how much real money new ship cost in Star citicen or paint job in the Elite? This all seems to be somewhat balance with that.

But ofcourse we can hope bundless. And as kdl88 said. You don't have to buy if you don't want to.

[Ethics Gradient]

It only costs $60 (US) if you want all the characters right now.  
 
With AD6, RoTR pretty much hit end-of-life; so until some new Adventure Path gets released, it's not like you have a ton of interesting new content to drop your gold on.  Feel free to support the devs with real money or not, but you've probably got all the time in the world to slowly buy up everything using gold.
 
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Edit: Sorry; that wasn't directed at you, @Hannibal_PJV.  Didn't notice I accidentally replied to your comment until it posted!  

Edited December 20, 2016 by Ethics Gradient

[PinkRose]

But it was $25 for the game and all 11 characters before.

Now, it's $60 for just the characters. Seems like they are reaching. But I hope it all works out for Obsidian. I want to see the next AP.

[MauGibrin]

My take on this: if you have a huge installed base, you can hope to earn a profit if 5% of your customers pay each around $1 a month. If you have a small installed base, maybe $10 a month by 5% of your installed base will not be enough...

 

I think they know pretty well that most of their customers will not pay those prices, but they expect a few fanatics will, and maybe this will keep their train going.

 

Maybe they should make the expansion to Steam a priority - with an extended installed base, things might become a little less expensive...

 

Cheers!

 

Mauricio

Edited December 20, 2016 by MauGibrin

[kdl88]

It's all economics. Sell those characters for 99c each and I'll probably buy all of them over time. Sell them for 10 bucks a pop and I'll ever touch them. What would you rather have? Some money or none? There is a reason angry birds was so popular... 99c. If it came out at 10 bucks we would never have heard about an angry birds movie.

[Faray]

I am disappointed too. I understand the company needs to make money, I mean that's the point of a business, but the prices seem way to high for what we are getting. I had no problem buying the entire base set because despite the price tag, the content was well worth it. 

 

That being said you can get everything offered for free, but I was planning on spending a little bit to support the team... but I can't justify it at these prices.

[TheSapient]

Agreed.  I paid for the full game (and a lot more than that for the paper version), and still pay for the daily gold.  I can't imagine paying $60 for modified characters.  I can't claim to be able to design an effective model for generating money from this game, but surely this isn't it.

 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not angry about it.  I'm not overly worried about access to the new characters or having all dice sets.  I want the game to be a financial success so that we get more.

[DaveBaum]

I think the devs have done a wonderful job with this game.

 

But some of the pricing decisions and special offers mystify me.

 

Rise of the Runelords bundle is the best PACG value, but it is very expensive for an iOS/Android game.  I suspect a price tag of $25 means many people won't even consider it.  Instead they will either grind gold to play for free or find some other game to play at a fraction of the price.  Either way, no money for Obsidian.

 

Then there was the special deal on gold that was only offered to people that hadn't bought anything in a long time.  Not a great way to thank your most loyal customers.

 

Now we have some purchasable vanity items (dice) and new content (alts).  But the pricing is outrageous.  The fact that the alt is always bundled with the base character makes anyone that already purchased the base character feel like they are paying twice.  And $60 as the "bargain" price for all 11 alts is absurd.  That's full price for a AAA console game.

 

If the alts were priced reasonably then I would purchase them.  At $2 per alt I might buy my 2 or 3 favorites, but not all of them.  A bundle of all 11 for $10 would be an instant purchase.  The dice prices are even worse.  Making the game look nicer with cool dice is worth $5 to me, tops.  I'd buy a few marbled or luminous dice at $1 each.  But not $20 for those bundles.

 

In short, if obsidian priced things reasonably I would have gladly spent another $10 or $15 on this game.  But at the current prices I can't see spending any money at all.

 

 

 

 

[LordGek]

Just seconding the many whines here.  I really want to support Obsidian for this amazing product and know running a dev studio is not cheap, but $60 for the alt characters makes ABSOLUTELY no sense.  Heck, I'm silly enough I'd maybe even stake another $24.99 for the whole set, and that's still an outrageous price for what amounts to such minor tweaks of existing content.

Edited December 21, 2016 by LordGek

[Lorddax]

I bought the armored pack.

 

I bought the game bundle for iOS and then again on android. I've bought all the specials save one.

 

I've got nothing to spend my gold on left besides the about 10 cards I'm missing. I'm about 1.5k short of gold buying a 7k char I want, which I'll probably pick up shortly.

 

Or I'll just wait till next month and pay 2.99 for another char since daily gold gets you 6k, which is why I believe the chars are at that price point.

 

I believe I'm in the target segrment right now, the gamer with the passion and deeper pockets to keep the content rolling for the grinders. I think that the prices are fair since you can get all the chars via playing the game, I can just pay to play with them now when I need a reason to keep coming back, now that I've got a max level char for each.

[StormbringerGT]

We are still figuring this pricing stuff out, so keep the feedback coming, good or bad.

[navara]

We are still figuring this pricing stuff out, so keep the feedback coming, good or bad.

 

Any update on this? Just checked out one of the characters packs and still it ask me for $40 in local currency. For characters I already have in RoTR bundle btw.

 

Do you really think asking $40 for four skins is fair price? That's the cost of all three major campaigns of Starcraft 2 just for comparison.

Edited July 5, 2017 by navara