The very horrible downside to micropayments on gear:
...many items in the game used to be available in one of two ways: valor points (VP), which you earned in combat and through playtime, and BattleFunds (BF), which were earned by spending real cash. Sure, some superficial things like outfits were BattleFunds-only, but all the important stuff - like better weapons - could be earned solely through consistent play.
Not anymore. EA have made sweeping changes to the game's online store, drastically raising the cost of almost everything bought via VP and lowering the price of almost everything bought via BF.
I'm not sure why anyone would think this is a good idea, except the shiny-faced, spittle-flecked manager in the corner screaming about profit targets.
As a manager who is trying to pay the bills and keep the lights on at my Indie shop with a business not a million miles from Heroes in model (and possibly revenues, team size, etc.), I often want to change pricing.
Occasionally I am brave enough to do so, despite spittle-flecked outcry about how unfair it is to charge money for a product that people like playing and can obviously leave and freely play any number of alternatives.
It's not easy to pick a pricing model from scratch and magically get it right first time. It's the nature of online games to change and be updated, and pricing is a key part of that process of optimization. Without changing pricing and hitting some kind of 'profit target' (like, I suspect, breaking even let alone recouping development costs) EA will almost certainly fire the team and avoid future such experiments. So I'd say we should all be supportive of them changing things to improve their chances of success.
I'd expect the players to complain bitterly at a pricing change, I'm used to that, but I'd hope for a little more understanding from the gallery of my peers!
- Daniel, only slightly shiny-faced
Posted by: Daniel James | December 02, 2009 at 17:55
No bugger plays this any more anyway.
Posted by: Mr Tom | December 02, 2009 at 17:56
Why Mr James! Howaya! :)
Hey, nothing wrong with changing *pricing*. But changing the game *balance* is surely not a good idea.
Although it's true that korean games tend to be entirely buyable, and no-one seems to complain there.
Still, a middle-of-the-game shiftaround with emphasis on power being purchasable over earnable, meh.
Posted by: Alice | December 02, 2009 at 19:08
I'm with Daniel. It's a brave new world here and the pioneers are going to have to experiment a lot. Some of those experiments are going to be failures. Some of them disastrous failures. Some not so much.
Not unrelated, I went to a talk last night by the guys that just released TouchPets Dogs for the iPhone (NGMoco published, Stumptown Games Machine developed). It uses a free-to-start, pay-to-play model, and and they noted that user feedback may have them adjusting away from pay-to-play and toward 'freemium' (pay for higher end items and missions). I took a few notes here:
http://www.kimpallister.com/2009/12/iphone-touchpets-post-mortem-talk-at.html
As for changing pricing vs balance... had they shifted in the other direction, would anyone be complaining? I'd argue they just made the game more expensive, c'est tout.
Posted by: Kim | December 02, 2009 at 23:54
I'm also curious (Daniel, others?) on how you do A-B testing on pricing when everything is so widely published and spreads across the web so quickly.
In 'traditional' casual games, there was opportunity to do a little bit of this (offer a game for $10 to group A, $20 to group B; 30 minute free trial vs 1hr, etc. But it seems Battlefield couldn't get away with that.
Posted by: Kim | December 02, 2009 at 23:58
Did you guys click through to the Kotaku piece though? It's less about pricechanging and more about gamebreaking due to pricechanging; I should have clipped more of the article I guess.
It's the IWin button that's the problem, not the testing price points.
Posted by: Alice | December 03, 2009 at 08:02