Oh boy...
Some skins cost less than 5€ (4), most skins cost between 5 and 15€ (10) and some skins cost more than 40€ (3). I will try to explain the reasoning for this with an open heart:
Most skins are reasonably priced. I had been considering buying some skins if the teased "big announcement" fixed the rewards system sufficiently, there's a lot of really cool ones and some prices aren't bad.
But they are random off-the-wall prices that make no sense. I think every single skin in the game has a different price, for seemingly no reason? Lycus Mars Merc is super cheap, and now we have an $80 Ginebra skin.
They are optional cosmetic items that don't affect gameplay:
Noooo... maybe not to some players. There will always be certain players who never care how they look or about cosmetics and will use the default look forever, they only care about "gameplay affecting" things like doing 1% more damage.
And there are other players out there who care deeply about cosmetics, playing dress up in a game is just as important, or more, than any functional advantages that they might be able to get. To these players, releasing a blatantly insane price on a cosmetic is either insulting, or predatory. It's kinda both.
Also, the Raiders amazing visual style, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, is one of the main positive draws for it.
I highly recommend this for further education on why the "it doesn't affect gameplay" is a false argument:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce5CDrq4dGgThey are 3D pieces that cost a lot of work hours to produce:
- If all skins were priced proportionally to the time they take to produce, they would all be around the 10-15$ range.
- That would leave a lot of players without the chance to own at least one or two skins for cheap.
You mean to tell me the work put into this skin is twice the amount of work that designing the actual campaigns costs? Because all 4 campaigns = $40, so an $80 skin justified by the amount of work needed sure sounds like it has more work put in than the entire rest of the game.
If the game generates more players, that means more interest in cosmetics, which means more total purchases. They will also be up for sale for the duration this game lasts. Are you just trying to get 1 or 2 whales to buy Ginebra? Because that's obviously the target audience here, with the clear intent to push this skin faaaaaar out of reach for the majority of players.
Disclaimer: for those who haven't heard the term whale before, here is an explanation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/63lvak/what_is_a_whale/- Ginebra and Loaht's skins take twice as much work because they need two different models.
- It makes sense that these are the skins chosen to be priced higher than the others.
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Makes sense. But hear me, and so many others out: Nine. Thousand. Points. $80 for "just a cosmetic."
Let's compare a high priced skin from a regular character... say one that costs 2500 points. That's $20 in raw points, I'd still say that's expensive, but I would have likely never thought to leave legit feedback regarding how bad it was. So this Ginebra skin is 4 times the work than Shae's Nun? It has new models on it, but it still has a lot of base Ginebra reused.
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Regardless, the real insult to the players here is putting something so unfathomably expensive into the game during the same week we are waiting to hear the "big changes" to the game economy, which I'd be very confident in saying is the #1 complaint turning potential new players off. I nearly quit after seeing the very first reward screen (which I got nothing, on my first win ever, because of the awful blueprint coin flip) and seeing character costs, but I went ahead and bought both current campaigns because I was optimistic.
I'd sure love to play Ginebra, but she is so expensive it will take ages to get her. Hans costs 25k. Is Ginebra actually
14 times better than him, based on their respective costs? We know she isn't, but she has been placed behind a massive grind wall and now paired with the most expensive single cosmetic I've seen in my gaming years.
Honestly 550 for "regulars" and 1250 for "rares"would be better.
There is another issue with the mercury point packs...they come at the most in 2500 so it kinda makes sense that the prices for skins are around that, usually less because 2500 is the biggest pack. It really is a bad UI that you have to do several purchases in steam, validate raiders etc just to have an item.
BTW. Have you considered adding re-colors of the skins themselves? Kinda like fighthing games. Those for 100 MP would be really nice or include 10 colors if you buy the skin in a pack or something.
Just want to second everything suggested here. A predictable, reasonable, attainable pricing that's even across the board, points that are easier to buy (seriously why even price something higher than the largest pack of points?). And recolor customization options, in a game with beautiful visuals.
