There's A Cash Shop In The Game?

come on uber, it'll just make you look bad. the game isn't even f2p.

whats wrong with it? they put it in because the community asked for it to support Uber
and its not like any of the stuff in store affects gameplay...in fact it only affects 1 unit, the commander >.O

They're cosmetics. Who gives a crap?

During the kickstarter, backers who pledged $1000 were allowed to make custom commanders. Uber asked them if they wanted to put them up for sale and get a cut of the profits, and some consented. The commanders are cosmetic only so there's nothing wrong with it at all.

You'll be able to enjoy the game just as much if you forget that the armory exists as someone who purchases a com or two.

Collectors?

Not to mention that the Commanders that are not for sale are also pretty cool looking, and you do not spend that much of the match even looking at them, much less using them.

So u want uber to support the game like gas powered supported supcom? I like their plan to stay profitable. It means a longterm commitment to the game.

Meh, it is an optional non-gameplay cosmetic they offer.

Really, it puts off "conventional development" where you make a really crappy pilot game and sell it for 30 dollars a pop, and if it is "good enough" the profit allows for a sequel using the same game engine with additional allowed development time.

Really, kickstarter and early access and longterm support and cosmetic and mod database idea, it has treated this game better than others often do. Assassin's Creed was a good series, but looking back the first one was very rough, even the second and third, really it was all a slowly improving development on the same engine and it started with "they had to release something quickly even if on a limited scale".

So the ones on sale are the user created ones?

For the time being yes.

Also can someone please actually explain why Uber gets to do whatever they want without critique just because so far it's only Cosmetics?

For that matter, why can we not talk about things like "value" when it comes to Cosmetics? As I've explained in the big Commander Cost thread, there just isn't 15$ worth of value in the current offerings, or rather, I can spend 15$ and get a heck of a lot more out of it elsewhere. And I'm not even talking about things like buying a cheap game or something, I'm talking about other cosmetic items fro other games! League of Legends is the obvious comparison and you get way more out of your cosmetic purchases than you do here in PA.

Mike

I think it's more designed by $1000 backers to be made by uber to fit the backers imagination on what they like the commander to look like.

You shouldn't look at it like that. You should look at like this: "Oh gee I love this game, I want to throw more money at the devs".

Why "shouldn't" we look at it like that?

It's much like the paytoNOTwin system in Loadout, you CANT buy weapons/stats ect just clothes n voices for your character.

Everyone dies all the same no matter how high your daddies credit card limit is.

To be fair, Uber have been pretty open in saying that they're still experimenting with pricing.

I'm sure they appreciate the feedback on it, both written and in terms of voting with your wallet, but I doubt you'll hear too much coming back from them on it because sales figures aren't something companies typically disclose.

The extra commanders have no value to me so I choose not to buy them. I'm not sure that Uber made the best business decision by pricing them so high since I would be surprised if many people are buying them, but I don't think players really have a right to tell Uber how to run their business.

Why thought? I 'm looking for an explanation, not just people saying I shouldn't.

Uh huh, more experiments like the Avenger eh? From what we've seen so far, by the time Uber publicly comments something as an "Experiment" they seem to have already decided to keep it the way it is. Fact is Uber had a chance to experiment back when the initial outburst happened or when they put out the second set of Commanders even thought they SHOULD have done it before opening the store or with the first wave of commanders. But I don't think they do real experimentation anymore, they already got the info they wanted, Neutrino did comment that out of the first set the best seller was the most expensive one on offer, which hey, that sounds reasonable at face value but then again when you actually analyze what was on offer bias is something one would need to consider. For one, there were only 10$ and 15$ Price Points, there weren't any "cheap" price points so there isn't any solid data to compare the sales numbers to. Secondly there were only 3 Commanders and you do have to take into account something like the appeal of the designs, maybe out of the 3 the most expensive one just so happened to be the design that was liked the most and that helped skew the numbers in it's favor.

Uber never came to the community to ask what we thought of the prices, they seemed to have just copied other games without taking the differences into account.

Players should have power to a point because Uber comes to us for revenue to continue to operate, the issue here is that "voting with your wallet"(but I do believe in as a principle) doesn't really work with stuff like this because the "Production cost" for a Commander is a set amount(and not a very large one either on top of the fact that the Custom Commanders already had a portion paid for by the backer) and because it's easy to "break even" regardless of the price that gets set it's EASY to make it back and still rake in profits even if you have a goodly portion of the community not buying it because they're upset with the prices.

If we don't agree with something we should talk about it, because going 100% passive isn't going to accomplish anything.

Mike

Should they be expected to though? Uber is a business. When I go shopping at Tesco, I look at the price on the shelf and make the decision whether or not to buy that item at that price. They don't consult with me first - they look at their costs, they look at the perceived value of the item, they look at the prices their competitors are offering on similar products and make an informed decision as to what price to charge for it.

The profitability of that particular item depends on them correctly gauging the revenue / contribution per sale and the number of sales. It's not necessarily something that community involvement will help with.

I suspect that the strongest form of feedback on their pricing is to vote with your wallet.

I hope that didn't come across as dismissive, and I certainly don't speak for Uber on this, but realistically I feel that no matter how much people discuss this topic, it's always going to have to boil down to what makes Uber money.

So long as they don't do a SOE and start adding pay-2-win elements, I don't feel their approach to pricing is that unreasonable.

You forgot to mention all the Market Research that needs to get done with new products, that includes things like pricing and what-not and we don't seem to have anything like that going into the commander pricing, like I said, it seems like they just pulled a price point from somewhere else without considering the circumstances that lead the other developer to select that price.

As I said, I do believe in voting with your wallet, I haven't bought an EA game since Dead Space 1, but at the end of the day this isn't the ideal world when that works, especially given the circumstances I described before. You'll need to convince my the circumstances don't apply somehow or that they're different for my to change my position, just telling me that voting with my wallet should work isn't enough because so far it's accomplished nothing you know? I'd wager that even if Uber put out a 25-30$ Commander Uber would still make a profit even if only around 100 people bough it simply because there is so little revenue needed to "break even" and make a profit.

But at this point I'm just repeating myself, not just what I've already said here but what I've said in other threads as well.

Mike

And the end of the day, neither you nor I have any knowledge of Uber's finances nor the internal workings of their marketing department. This is the sort of thing that is dependent on both of those and a whole lot more, and I feel like we're speculating on things of which we have very little knowledge. They may have done market research somewhere, for example, and we didn't hear about it.

I suppose it all comes down to how much faith you have in their ability to market a product profitably. I hope, for all our sakes, that they are able to do so well and keep PA running for many years to come.

No, that's not it at all. Like I said, making a profit of a Commander is easy regardless of the price set. My issue is that they aren't being marketed fairly.

Mike