KNight's Custom Commander Adventure

why not make one that looks like a ship? or a hovercraft commander?

Because the Rig constraints wouldn't allow me to create something appealing to me.

Mike

Immediately put me in mind of the Demigod Rook.

Looks like an Imperator class Titan from Warhammer 40k

I personally prefer the silhouette of your new concept- it reminds me of a mechwarrior mech more than anything. Obviously it doesn't look as hot as you're first one due to the lack of detail however I can envisage how its going to look...

So been a little quiet on my end, but hopefully that should be letting up now, I got a sweet new set-up with new 24" TVs and a custom shelf I built;


But I've also messed around a bit with the 1.2 variant;



Mike

Really liking the head.

Nice setup too!

you should post in the PC rig thread in the unrelated discussion area.

The leg and head design of this new model is shaping up quite nicely

So Commander Micro-transactions and out in the wild so I guess I can talk about it? Gonna make use of this little soapbox of mine to talk a bit about it with some stuff about about my commander at the end.

So just gonna start off by saying that as a consumer I don't like the idea of Micro-Transactions in a pre-release product at all. Games like Hawken and MWO are doing this and it's just something I don't really agree with, testing the systems is valid but actually taking real money in exchange for digital goods during the beta phase doesn't really sit right with me. PA does happen to be in an odd grey area compared to Hawken and MWO because the commanders are cosmetic only but it still feels odd.

Then comes the price, so far we've seen 10$ and 15$ as price points for 1K Backer Commanders with seemingly no specific reason for the difference. Even ignoring the actual price points this feels kinda weird to begin with. Aside for the different visuals there is nothing different on offer to back up the difference in cost. Only thing I could think of is that Uber gave more power to the specific Backers to set the price than they had initially let on that they would in prior threads that discussed this sort of possibility but I have no way of knowing for sure yet.

The price point(s) do seem really out of whack for what is being offered I think. Yeah sure League of Legends commonly has skins for 10-15$ but when you consider the different circumstances it makes way more sense in LoL. The skins themselves are featured much more prominently in-game and just have more to offer with not only a different skin but also different voice overs and different effects as well. The 10-15$ just flat out gets you more in LoL in my opinion and it's not to say that some day Uber might do something that "deserves/requires" that 10-15$ price tag but I just don't think the 1k commanders are that "thing".

I do like that compared to LoL, PA commanders can be used regardless how how you want to play, I may love Bear Calvary Sejuani, but something I just don't want to play Sejuani! Maybe I want to play Ziggs, or attack damage Blitzcrank(or Bop-crank as I call him). With PA it's nice that I can use any skin I want no matter what I feel like doing in game, whether it's Tank Rushing, Naval Bombardment or Air Superiority it just doesn't matter.

Now this leads me to some points for my commander.

It's funny because despite the work I've done on the second variant I still feel like I like the first one more. This kinda happens a lot because when I'm designing something I've always done so in a very "free-flow" manner, making changes constantly as I zero in on something I like and generally I don't "finish" something until I'm happy with it(a benefit of not having deadlines) so once I hit that point I'm just done! I was hoping to try and break out of that pattern this time around but clearly it didn't really work! xD

And all this kinda leaves me in an awkward position. I could drop all work on the current variant and focus on getting the first one done and "in-game".

The Businessman in me says this is the smart thing to do because if I wait until I have more competition that is more entrenched than I would be would only hurt my own potential.

But the Consumer in me says that I probably shouldn't violate my principles and support a Micro-Transaction scheme I don't like myself.

Then the Modder in me also pipes up to remind me that if I want to have a serious go a modding PA I'll really need to step up my game from when I was working on BlacksOps because compared to what PA's modding scene could be, SupCom's was downright serene. Also haiving a Custom Commander available could easily be a big positive for my "personal brand" and the potential for a secondary income is a big deal for my future ability to make things too.

In the end, it's too early to make any decisions, first thing for me to do is start talking to Uber to figure out the real details and go from there but I just wanted to share some of my thoughts for now and talk about it a bit to see some other view points and such.

Sorry for being quiet lately, just been dealing with a bunch of small things that in terms of raw time don't a out to as much as one might expect by are mentally draining and just leave me wanting to sit around and watch YouTube! xD

Mike

MWO transactions are just horrible at the moment ... and probably will be it in the future imo ...
the big differense between PA and MWO is that commanders are purely cosmetical as were in MWO content such as HEROmechs have gameplay impact even if it may not be that much currently i have concerns with mechs that allow for arguebly better builds and stats .. this is not an issue in PA´s case ... at all ... the only thing that might matter is how the various gunarms may work in the future ... i personaly am totaly fine with uber selling purely cosmetiv stuff ... but as you said the prices are a bit questionable but that depends on modelquality aswell ... who knows maybe we get some extravoice or effectpacks with commanders ... so why not ...
as long as anyone has access to the same unitpool and transactions not affecting gameplay in any way it´s all fine with me ...

If the prices hover around a $1-2 dollars for the assets, I'll consider searching for one I like (if the market drops the price, and I see one that I like). But I have to fully agree, the prices our outrageous.

Now I don't mind micro transaction in F2P, as I actually have family who worked on those small mmo's and I have a behind the scenes look at them. The philosophy for their team was that the micro transaction would fall into two catagories. Either be completely cosmetic, such as clothing/armor for the character that didn't change the gameplay, or items that help the player's progression through the game incase they didn't have the time to put into the game. This was balanced by restricting the items to things like xp rates upgrades for set lengths of time. Or little one use items like portals that allowed players to jump to player hubs. In those cases its fine. And I don't really mind if it falls into either catagory.

But this is INSANE. And if the players are indeed making the prices, I don't know what to think? They're REALLY greedy, or Uber has consulted them on what the prices should be. These should sell themselves in VOLUME not their 'prestige'. I hope Uber changes how the economy is currently running here.

I never understood why people think that way. Beta exists to balance things and fix bugs. If items from the shop affect balance in any way (as exp boosts affect balance between grind and not grind), they should be tested, and they should be tested and balanced on the same level of availability as in release version, i.e. sold for the same price. And bugs in the marketplace are critical - it's better to run it for long time with limited audience to catch everything, than to get dupe glitch, or to have to return money for ten thousand failed microtransactions at release.

I did mention that as well and like I said, it's kind of a gray area but I still feel that in general payments before release of this nature really shouldn't be around, maybe test the systems by "gifting" people some cash and wiping it as testing continues or before release so that everyone can kind of get a taste of what there is and see for themselves have kind of value they get out of it while Uber gets to test the system but when it's juts thrown in with little-to-no warning it feels very "I know we never really mentioned it but we just pushed out the first pass on the payment systems and we're pretty sure this'll work so just go ahead and test it for us with your real money plzkthx" and it just doesn't really sit right for me. Like, what happens if Uber adjusts the prices next week? are they doing to refund the difference to players that already bought something? There are just so many questions that we just haven't been given any answers to.

Yeah, it's kinda like what goes on with Steam Sales, you'd think that companies would hate the idea of thier game being discounted by 90% but the reality is that because there is little to no "production cost" on digital goods it's actually really easy to rake in a nice profit during the Steam Sales. Now obviously this situation has very different context but I feel the idea is the same, sell something at an accessible price even if the price per-unit feels a little low and you can still end up turning a profit because it IS accessible. Of course it's not quite as simple as "lol make it rly cheep" and would take some good research to figure things out but there is definitely a range of price points that would work for this.

Again, PA's system sits in this grey area that makes it really hard to lay any specific claims upon it. I think that if this was even 2-3 years ago they could be forgiven for maybe making a mistake or misjudging things but nowadays there are just so many examples of good and bad executions of this stuff that you really have to put effort into getting it right because like I mentioned before, it's easy to look at something like LoL and see that you really do get more for your money and it gets people thinking about why they should pay for it.

I mean, I've mentioned it elsewhere but things like "value" and such are really subjective and when it comes to Art and in a way it's tough for us to say that PA commanders aren't worth the prices they're listed at.........if this were 4-5 years ago, but nowadays Modding and related skills have penetrated the Consumer base quite a bit from "ye olden times" and there is just a much better understanding of the work involved and honestly, the Style PA has was done in such a way that it wouldn't be overtly complex because things like large unit rosters and the 1K Custom Commanders were things PA was aiming for so it needed to be able to be tackled by a smaller team on top of things like easily readable and what not but in the end, it's not a hugely time consuming process IMO.

I mean, looking at the price the current commanders are listed at and the price on KS for a Custom Commander(it was a 500$ jump from the previous tier and the only addition was the Custom Commander but hell lets just use 1000$ anyways to err on the safer side of things) it like they only expect to sell 100-150 copies of the commanders, and you know, depending how saturated the inventory gets and the price it might not be that unreasonable but to me it personally feels incredibly short-sighted and silly when added on to all teh other points that could be raised about the price.

I dunno I want to stress again that this is just a lot of initial thoughts based on the EXTREMELY limited info there is dealing with the finer points of all this and I don't want anyone to rush into this making judgments and such at this stage but I will say, it feels really awkward so far and we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.

Also gonna be doing some edits of my original post, typed that up at the tail end of my work shift and didn't get a chance to fully check it out until now and IPhones are notorious for tricking me into thinking I caught errors as I was typing only to look back and realize that while all the words are spelled right, sometimes it has different words that don't work the same way.....

Mike

It's a tricky subject- the purchasable commanders, however on balance I think the principal is sound because they're just cosmetic. As long as purchasing one is a choice I'm ok with that. The price is a little high in my opinion $5 sounds a more sensible target to me, if it's less then great.

Another thing I'm not clear on, do the 1k backers who make their custom commander available for purchase get a cut, or do all the proceeds go to Uber? If a proportion of the proceeds go to the backer then that would probably explain the price differences (i.e. the backer gets to decide what they think is reasonable). In that case you should get on it Mike- if you have the option to decide the price, undercut these other dudes with a superior commander and hopefully sell a few (I'd be seriously tempted, you're concept work looks awesome).

The gray area stuff mostly deals with my opinion on doing this stuff before release, like I said it's certainly better than what Hawken/MWO have going on during thier "Betas" but it just still violate something I very much believe in. I think if you removed that aspect of the argument and simply focused on the execution of it I really do think it comes down to an issue of price.

Who knows honestly. I probably won't be able to get any serious talking done until sometime next week with the Holiday in the US and tomorrow already being Friday and me probably not having a chance to get the initial email sent off until after work tomorrow.

Also it's too early to make any decisions, I have very little info on all this, I will say I figured it was a possibility and later on when I started work on all this I know it was an option for me but so far I haven't received any official info about about, somewhat understandable because I'm outside the "normal" process here. In the end thought it will really depend on what I find out because I do strongly feel that if there is something you don't support you really shouldn't support it. If the info I receive doesn't "fix" the issues I have or I can't reach an accord with Uber on that stuff I really don't want to be making use of that system you know? But even then it's still not that black and white, it'd be easy for me to just "ignore" all the issues on the basis that I benefit from it all in many different ways and probably in the end it could be something that can be chalked up as a "For the Greater Good" type thing but that kind of thing has never really sat well with me. As much as a second "work free" revenue stream would be REALLY nice for me I and nothing if not an expert at guilt tripping myself over stuff so just blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhgggggggggggg.

I'm starting to go in circles which means I should probably stop, I think I've basically said all I can at this point and just need to focus on getting more details.

Mike

It's optional graphics with no gameplay effect and no requirement to purchase. My moral compass says: who gives a ****?

Ah if this many people are complaining then obviously someone gives a ****.

I've stated this before but if we just sit on the sidelines not acknowledging issues such as overpricing then it is likely to have an effect on what the company thinks it can get away with and will eventually have an effect on many other aspects of the game or future games.

People settled for microtransactions in mobile games (they said it was fine), then the prices rose, then ingame currency came around and then they started charging ludicrous amounts for simple items (simple graphics or not) and then finally the overpricing and idea that they could get away with this resulted in the crazy amount of microtransactions present in the mobile scene now. Take a guess at what might happen to PC games if we stay quiet. I can tell you a repeat of the mobile scene is beginning to happen already.

I'm not totally against microtransactions, but having them while the game is still indev makes absolutely no sense as pricing issues may arise, and they should not cost this much in the first place. I can buy a damn good indie game for $15 instead of a model/skin.

Anyway I wont post anymore about this topic here so I don't derail the thread.(Sorry KNight if i did derail it)

They have sales data.

The part I agree with is the devaluation of existing products vs. people who have already bought them. I agree that Uber need to be more transparent here.

However, if they refund existing purchases in any way (should be easy-ish given the centralised Uber account system), that would settle my problems. Time will tell which way they go, mind.

Back to the workdesk setup . . . is that a Tyranid in black on your PC case?

It's actually a Necron Triarch Stalker.

Mike