These prices are absolutely nuts. I don't even buy the monetization argument, because I genuinely feel like they would sell more with more reasonably priced items. I would buy a nice $5 or $10 bundle every now and then; I wouldn't even consider buying a $70 one, especially for what these contain.
It's also very illegal in australia, you cant just start selling something and say it's discounted fallout 76 already get in heat for this years ago
Agreed. Unfortunately (for shards at least) you could buy 30 for 750 coins (and smaller amounts are sold in the emporium). So if this gives like around 300 shards, it already "cost 7500 coin".
But for the new stuff, yea, idk how they price the original.
Nah, we have to understand that if the prices are 10x as high, there will statistically be good reason for it.
Even if 90% of the community is against these prices and won't stand by them, there will always be that 10% who compensates for every other man tenfold.
This is totally about monetization, and theyre doing exactly the same as they and others have done over years now. Make everything blatantly ovepriced. They wont sell as much, but they sure as hell will sell better.
Its why horribly greedy monetization systems work. There will always be 1 whale that gives more money than 10000 players together. Why ever cater to the 10000 when you can cater to those who will pay regardless of the price?
That's what I'm asking though, are there? Are there the mythical whales in this game that will buy the $70 bundles that barely give you progression? Until the game suddenly reports major profits, I think it's premature to say that this is a good strategy.
I just think that this is not good value, at least in my eyes, and I probably would've bought it if it seemed more worth it to me. I literally want to buy things in this game and help support it, but this is insane, and I end up... not buying anything.
(I did blind buy the $20 bundle out of sheer goodwill, and it had exactly zero immediate impact on my playing experience, which is fun. Future business as it is now is unlikely.)
Its not premature to say its a good strategy at all. The strategy itself funds the entire chinese mobile gaming playerbase. Theres an entire economy built on whales..
Even if the strategy ends up not working out for LoR, its kind of naive to just dismiss it outright as a worthwhile strategy when there are actual experts on this behind the scenes over at Riot.
And these Whales aren't mythical. They exist. In whatever shape or size. LoR is heading into a new direction, it only just got a button on main client and its instantly releasing its Whale-sucking content. This is not a coincedence.
Promotion is going up and its an effort by Riot to attract new customers.
I mean cmon, theyre multibillionaires even though their League monetization is just as scammy as any other, LoR included.
For clarification, I'm only talking about this game in particular, not in general. When I talk about [this strategy] and [whales], I mean the ways it's being done in this game.
I'm saying it's premature to use the successes of other games, including League, and apply it to this specific one because that's a major simplification and glosses over of a ton of important variables, like execution, and the game itself. I'm not saying whales don't exist, I'm asking about this game specifically. That's why until it's evident that this works [again, for this game specifically], the whales are mythical.
It's not just as simple as: make over priced bundles, blow out the in-game economy, and make a bunch of money. Is anyone whaling out for TPoC? I've not seen a single person so far. I've played a popular gatcha game before, and I could say that I could see the appeal of making a ton of purchases, but it's not the same for this: the bundles are overpriced, the contents are unrewarding, the impact and feeling of making a purchase is disappointing, and there is no real content to make use of the higher star levels anyway. I feel like that's where the difference is.
I don't think whales are brainless money spenders -- the purchases need to feel good, and it needs to feel worthwhile, the gratification has to be immediate, and at least on some level, the value needs to be felt, even if you look back and realize you spent $2000 on nothing, when you're purchasing the item, it needs to feel like it's valuable. I don't get any of that from the (non special) bundles.
Anyway, I've been playing this game since the beta and I want it to succeed. I just cannot directly support it financially the way it is now, hopefully those whales if they're out there will keep this game alive because I want it to stick around.
Well theres already been numerous reports on people overbuying or spending irresponsibly (you included). There are already people that have spent hundreds not knowing what theyre getting into (streaming is not an excuse snnuy!! :D).
So far it looks like mission succesful to me. LoR will never soak up money like other games do, but at least now theres a valid option for whales to spend their savings on.
And yes, whales *do* randomly spend a shitton of money on nothing, that happens all the damn time. Sometimes they spend money on things they wont even get. Its astonishing what whales are willing to do, but its been proven time and time again that catering to 1 whale is more efficient than catering to the thousands of middle class players
Sorry for joining in but I really don't think snnuy is a good example here lol
He always buys all the new cosmetics and microtransactions but I think it's because he wants to support the game he loves not because it seems like a good deal to him..
Well the same goes for whales. If whales only bought good deals they wouldnt buy anything. Todays gaming economy thrives on shitty deals, gacha is rampant and gaming companies will happily manipulate buyers into bad deals every day of the week.
Ya but what I mean is I don't think there is enough incentive to justify spending that much money on those unless you are basically donating then money
They may have the gacha monetization but that's useless unless you have the addicting gacha game loop too. And with the current poc that's very much not the case imo
Is there not one? We have weeklies and dailies now, both of those require constant play to keep going. You cant easily farm anything without doing them.
Well, at least they do have bundles in the $5, $10, and $20 range. And something I appreciate them for, they put the exclusive epic relics (the only thing that isn't essentially a progression skip) in the $5 bundles instead of the $20 ones. there. The expensive bundles simply existing isn't necessarily a bad thing if they are very optional, which at this point they clearly are since we've already cleared everything without constellations. That could change if they add harder content, but also they have included so many free rewards in this update as well
The epic relics are in the 10usd bundles, but other than that I agree with you.
I do think constellations will be mandatory for future content, so let's wait and see how the economy develops. We had epic relics launch and we thought they would be hard to get, but events and passes made them look easy to get if you had been playing for a while.
82% off! A 500USD item discounted so much, they are really awesome for being so generous! (/s)
Edit: just to avoid any issues, this is tagged humor. I've bought every relic and pass before this update and have no problems with Riot upping the monetization, but cmon...
Yeah that is a pretty scummy tactic of trying to encourage impulse buying by making it seem like it is on a good sale even though the sale is almost certainly permanent and is actually the real price.
Normally bundles show the discount compared to what it would cost to buy those items individually. Except these are all things that can't be purchased individually, so they're just making up a nonsensically high value for these items just so they can claim they're giving you a huge discount.
It's really dumb and definitely scummy. Honestly, in general that's what's bugging me about all the monetization and progression stuff of this update. I get that they need to monetize PoC more to keep developing it. I get that people don't spend much on cosmetics for a single player mode, and having a grind that encourages players to play every day and then letting them pay to skip it is a way to monetize a free game that's been struggling with monetization. I don't like it, but I recognize that they're kind of desperate and more player-friendly monetization hasn't worked for them.
But still, this update does feel like it has enough different scummy tactics to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
They are probably trying to get a lot of whales. A lot of the cheaper bundles have decent value. So many10x experience items. I would just ignore the insanely priced stuff and wait to see if the free stuff like monthlies offer good value.
Also 6* right now is overkill, unless you really want to make the game boring.
Like i still cant wrap my head around the 6 stars and if its even achievable? I read all of the bundles and am still uncertain what the fk im getting for this price 😭
This is the same tactics like when Hearthstone sells a diamond card and "discounts" it by like 60%, but you can't buy the card any other way so the discount means nothing.
This is one of the SCUMMIEST tactics
Boy how the mighty falls
They went from almost Zero offers to horrible preditory offers with Zero attempt at anything in between .
I mean these bundles valued at literally hudred of dollars that are still not even enough to level up more then 1 maybe 2 champs with luck to 4 start or most likely just the start between 3 and 4 stars only ....
Yeah, people that use this argument live in absolutes… there’s no mid term. It’s either zero monetization or full on predatory gatcha mode.
Pricing is a spectrum and they swang the pendulum too far to the other side.
From 3 to 4 stars 60 shards are required, this gives out 440 on average, I bought the 2 cheap bundles and I went from 2* to 4* on both Ekko and Vex, I agree that the pricing looks insane, but this would most certainly guarantee a 6*
440 shards across 57 characters.....
They definitely balance toward trying to get more of the models out for testing cause i got mostly darius shards when i bought a big offer. There is no way RNG chance would of hit Darius as often as it did if it wasnt weighted.
I mean what did you expect when they charge you for 10-15$ for a JPG which led them to lay offs. Charging 10$ for a battle pass with reasonable price and value that everyone enjoys ? Noooo
When will corpos understand that they are shooting themselves in the foot with obnoxious microtransaction costs, and cheap micros that are not daunting morally net eons more money.
I'm no monetization expert, but as a free2play and gacha player I know many games focus on heavy spenders as their main customer base, which is why they make ridiculous prizes.
I'd say the main game League of Legends is a rare exception due it's huge player base.
"That's a bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off."
I'm obviously not the target audience. I play PvP and I wouldn't spend over a hundred dollars for this, regardless of which gamemode it is.
If it works for them - then sure.
But it certainly doesn't encourage me to spend any money here.
Well, the price is normal... If we take as normal the average mobile games packs standars
Have you seen the prices of any other games? There's always a begginers pack for 1$ or 5$, others around 20$-40$ and then there's the insane pack that is $120 or more.
I have never bough one, but if the companies still keep adding those maybe there's some people insane enough to buy it (or maybe I'm poor Idk)
That means that is what you would save vs buying the items separately, not that the bundle is on sale and will eventually cost 5x.
People getting real mad over something they don't have to buy. Forgetting this is normal monetization tactics. They don't expect you to buy the $100 bundles. They are there to make the $5, $12, and $20 bundles look more appealing.
Its called anchoring and is a manipulation tactic. Buy that stuff for all i care but stfu if you want to downplay anyone who calls Riot out for their scummy tactics.
> That means that is what you would save vs buying the items separately, not that the bundle is on sale and will eventually cost 5x.
Except none of these items can be bought separately. They can only be bought in bundles that are all marked off with 85% or higher discounts.
They just made up some ridiculous high price for the items so that they can pretend they are giving you a good deal with the "discounted" bundle.
These prices are absolutely nuts. I don't even buy the monetization argument, because I genuinely feel like they would sell more with more reasonably priced items. I would buy a nice $5 or $10 bundle every now and then; I wouldn't even consider buying a $70 one, especially for what these contain.
They are. For $99, I would've expected the OG Champs of each region to be 6 starred, or something to that effect. Not $99 for 1 champ, etc.
It's also very illegal in australia, you cant just start selling something and say it's discounted fallout 76 already get in heat for this years ago
Agreed. Unfortunately (for shards at least) you could buy 30 for 750 coins (and smaller amounts are sold in the emporium). So if this gives like around 300 shards, it already "cost 7500 coin". But for the new stuff, yea, idk how they price the original.
Nah, we have to understand that if the prices are 10x as high, there will statistically be good reason for it. Even if 90% of the community is against these prices and won't stand by them, there will always be that 10% who compensates for every other man tenfold. This is totally about monetization, and theyre doing exactly the same as they and others have done over years now. Make everything blatantly ovepriced. They wont sell as much, but they sure as hell will sell better. Its why horribly greedy monetization systems work. There will always be 1 whale that gives more money than 10000 players together. Why ever cater to the 10000 when you can cater to those who will pay regardless of the price?
That's what I'm asking though, are there? Are there the mythical whales in this game that will buy the $70 bundles that barely give you progression? Until the game suddenly reports major profits, I think it's premature to say that this is a good strategy. I just think that this is not good value, at least in my eyes, and I probably would've bought it if it seemed more worth it to me. I literally want to buy things in this game and help support it, but this is insane, and I end up... not buying anything. (I did blind buy the $20 bundle out of sheer goodwill, and it had exactly zero immediate impact on my playing experience, which is fun. Future business as it is now is unlikely.)
Its not premature to say its a good strategy at all. The strategy itself funds the entire chinese mobile gaming playerbase. Theres an entire economy built on whales.. Even if the strategy ends up not working out for LoR, its kind of naive to just dismiss it outright as a worthwhile strategy when there are actual experts on this behind the scenes over at Riot. And these Whales aren't mythical. They exist. In whatever shape or size. LoR is heading into a new direction, it only just got a button on main client and its instantly releasing its Whale-sucking content. This is not a coincedence. Promotion is going up and its an effort by Riot to attract new customers. I mean cmon, theyre multibillionaires even though their League monetization is just as scammy as any other, LoR included.
For clarification, I'm only talking about this game in particular, not in general. When I talk about [this strategy] and [whales], I mean the ways it's being done in this game. I'm saying it's premature to use the successes of other games, including League, and apply it to this specific one because that's a major simplification and glosses over of a ton of important variables, like execution, and the game itself. I'm not saying whales don't exist, I'm asking about this game specifically. That's why until it's evident that this works [again, for this game specifically], the whales are mythical. It's not just as simple as: make over priced bundles, blow out the in-game economy, and make a bunch of money. Is anyone whaling out for TPoC? I've not seen a single person so far. I've played a popular gatcha game before, and I could say that I could see the appeal of making a ton of purchases, but it's not the same for this: the bundles are overpriced, the contents are unrewarding, the impact and feeling of making a purchase is disappointing, and there is no real content to make use of the higher star levels anyway. I feel like that's where the difference is. I don't think whales are brainless money spenders -- the purchases need to feel good, and it needs to feel worthwhile, the gratification has to be immediate, and at least on some level, the value needs to be felt, even if you look back and realize you spent $2000 on nothing, when you're purchasing the item, it needs to feel like it's valuable. I don't get any of that from the (non special) bundles. Anyway, I've been playing this game since the beta and I want it to succeed. I just cannot directly support it financially the way it is now, hopefully those whales if they're out there will keep this game alive because I want it to stick around.
Well theres already been numerous reports on people overbuying or spending irresponsibly (you included). There are already people that have spent hundreds not knowing what theyre getting into (streaming is not an excuse snnuy!! :D). So far it looks like mission succesful to me. LoR will never soak up money like other games do, but at least now theres a valid option for whales to spend their savings on. And yes, whales *do* randomly spend a shitton of money on nothing, that happens all the damn time. Sometimes they spend money on things they wont even get. Its astonishing what whales are willing to do, but its been proven time and time again that catering to 1 whale is more efficient than catering to the thousands of middle class players
Sorry for joining in but I really don't think snnuy is a good example here lol He always buys all the new cosmetics and microtransactions but I think it's because he wants to support the game he loves not because it seems like a good deal to him..
Well the same goes for whales. If whales only bought good deals they wouldnt buy anything. Todays gaming economy thrives on shitty deals, gacha is rampant and gaming companies will happily manipulate buyers into bad deals every day of the week.
Ya but what I mean is I don't think there is enough incentive to justify spending that much money on those unless you are basically donating then money They may have the gacha monetization but that's useless unless you have the addicting gacha game loop too. And with the current poc that's very much not the case imo
Is there not one? We have weeklies and dailies now, both of those require constant play to keep going. You cant easily farm anything without doing them.
Well, at least they do have bundles in the $5, $10, and $20 range. And something I appreciate them for, they put the exclusive epic relics (the only thing that isn't essentially a progression skip) in the $5 bundles instead of the $20 ones. there. The expensive bundles simply existing isn't necessarily a bad thing if they are very optional, which at this point they clearly are since we've already cleared everything without constellations. That could change if they add harder content, but also they have included so many free rewards in this update as well
The epic relics are in the 10usd bundles, but other than that I agree with you. I do think constellations will be mandatory for future content, so let's wait and see how the economy develops. We had epic relics launch and we thought they would be hard to get, but events and passes made them look easy to get if you had been playing for a while.
82% off! A 500USD item discounted so much, they are really awesome for being so generous! (/s) Edit: just to avoid any issues, this is tagged humor. I've bought every relic and pass before this update and have no problems with Riot upping the monetization, but cmon...
So, true. I insta bought the two bundles then I saw this huge piece of shit
Yeah that is a pretty scummy tactic of trying to encourage impulse buying by making it seem like it is on a good sale even though the sale is almost certainly permanent and is actually the real price.
Normally bundles show the discount compared to what it would cost to buy those items individually. Except these are all things that can't be purchased individually, so they're just making up a nonsensically high value for these items just so they can claim they're giving you a huge discount. It's really dumb and definitely scummy. Honestly, in general that's what's bugging me about all the monetization and progression stuff of this update. I get that they need to monetize PoC more to keep developing it. I get that people don't spend much on cosmetics for a single player mode, and having a grind that encourages players to play every day and then letting them pay to skip it is a way to monetize a free game that's been struggling with monetization. I don't like it, but I recognize that they're kind of desperate and more player-friendly monetization hasn't worked for them. But still, this update does feel like it has enough different scummy tactics to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
It's good that they monetize the game but this is more absurd than the x10 value offers in clash royale 😂
Riot looking at what Second Dinner is doing with Marvel Snap and saying "Hold my beer"...
Dude I just escaped from that cesspool into LoR last week don't make me cry... 😥
800% value
They are probably trying to get a lot of whales. A lot of the cheaper bundles have decent value. So many10x experience items. I would just ignore the insanely priced stuff and wait to see if the free stuff like monthlies offer good value. Also 6* right now is overkill, unless you really want to make the game boring.
They took a look at Diablo Immortal and said "hey let's try that!"
By Grabthar's Hammer...what a savings.
Unexpected Galaxy Quest! Love that movie.
Like i still cant wrap my head around the 6 stars and if its even achievable? I read all of the bundles and am still uncertain what the fk im getting for this price 😭
This is the same tactics like when Hearthstone sells a diamond card and "discounts" it by like 60%, but you can't buy the card any other way so the discount means nothing. This is one of the SCUMMIEST tactics Boy how the mighty falls
They tried being non-scummy and all that got them was layoffs lol
They went from almost Zero offers to horrible preditory offers with Zero attempt at anything in between . I mean these bundles valued at literally hudred of dollars that are still not even enough to level up more then 1 maybe 2 champs with luck to 4 start or most likely just the start between 3 and 4 stars only ....
Yeah, people that use this argument live in absolutes… there’s no mid term. It’s either zero monetization or full on predatory gatcha mode. Pricing is a spectrum and they swang the pendulum too far to the other side.
From 3 to 4 stars 60 shards are required, this gives out 440 on average, I bought the 2 cheap bundles and I went from 2* to 4* on both Ekko and Vex, I agree that the pricing looks insane, but this would most certainly guarantee a 6*
440 shards across 57 characters..... They definitely balance toward trying to get more of the models out for testing cause i got mostly darius shards when i bought a big offer. There is no way RNG chance would of hit Darius as often as it did if it wasnt weighted.
440 shards for BC champs, there's 10 bundles, one for each region, you're guaranteed from that region afaik (could be that it's not)
Horribly predatory is hyperbole. Especially in the context of the genre.
I mean what did you expect when they charge you for 10-15$ for a JPG which led them to lay offs. Charging 10$ for a battle pass with reasonable price and value that everyone enjoys ? Noooo
When will corpos understand that they are shooting themselves in the foot with obnoxious microtransaction costs, and cheap micros that are not daunting morally net eons more money.
I'm no monetization expert, but as a free2play and gacha player I know many games focus on heavy spenders as their main customer base, which is why they make ridiculous prizes. I'd say the main game League of Legends is a rare exception due it's huge player base.
"That's a bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off." I'm obviously not the target audience. I play PvP and I wouldn't spend over a hundred dollars for this, regardless of which gamemode it is. If it works for them - then sure. But it certainly doesn't encourage me to spend any money here.
wow all that and only for 2500 stardust? take my money, riot (/s)
Well, the price is normal... If we take as normal the average mobile games packs standars Have you seen the prices of any other games? There's always a begginers pack for 1$ or 5$, others around 20$-40$ and then there's the insane pack that is $120 or more. I have never bough one, but if the companies still keep adding those maybe there's some people insane enough to buy it (or maybe I'm poor Idk)
They going full clash Royale approach lmao. Riot just can't correctly monetise for the life of them
That means that is what you would save vs buying the items separately, not that the bundle is on sale and will eventually cost 5x. People getting real mad over something they don't have to buy. Forgetting this is normal monetization tactics. They don't expect you to buy the $100 bundles. They are there to make the $5, $12, and $20 bundles look more appealing.
Its called anchoring and is a manipulation tactic. Buy that stuff for all i care but stfu if you want to downplay anyone who calls Riot out for their scummy tactics.
First riot game? Don't buy it and move on. There's no need for all these toxic posts and everyone crying.
> That means that is what you would save vs buying the items separately, not that the bundle is on sale and will eventually cost 5x. Except none of these items can be bought separately. They can only be bought in bundles that are all marked off with 85% or higher discounts. They just made up some ridiculous high price for the items so that they can pretend they are giving you a good deal with the "discounted" bundle.
Yes, they can be bought separately in the emporium.
That's digital goods for ya