Commander Prices: Too much?

I love this sh*t, i bet Uber has bets about this stuff @ the office it's like this.

Guys new update tomorrow, we all know we gonna introduce commander skins for a price, how many topics or pages do you think will be made in a week, the one who wins goes to paris

must have been pretty tired that moment , apologies ...
fixed it ...

I know I'm late to the party. So let's take a look at Uber history with micro-transactions.

Skip to about 10 minutes 45 seconds.

Now free-to-play it's completely different than what's happening here. Also that might have contributed to SMNC eventual financial issues. On a side note it's really nice for them to keep the servers up. I would've shut them down if I was in charge. They would have had a 60 day notice then shut them down. No revenue coming in equals no servers.

So it 1 to 2 weeks to produce a commander and from the backer was contributed 25% or 50% of the total cost. On the assumption of artists make $25 an hour. That means 2.5 work days in man-hours is provided by the backer anything after is Uber's cost. They would have provided 500 to 1,500 dollar worth of time. This is a one-time cost due to the nature of digital goods. Uber has to recuperate the costs in order to continue developing PA into the future. They do have plans to continue the development over 40 years or more. They need a revenue stream outside of PA sales to do such a thing. Sales will eventually plateau; hopefully they'll have traditional expansions as well.

Personally I believe the price of the custom commanders is too high. They really don't fall underneath micro transactions. Especially if you take in account that it is half of PA price right now. More reasonable price would've been around us$1.75 to 2.99. Then again there is no point griping about it a luxury item inside a luxury item.

Edit: work days
Edit2: on second thought maybe $5 would be fine as long as you get your money's worth. $10 would definitely be stretching it.
Edit: the third: $15 is most definitely likely overextended but depending on multitude of social economic factors it depends.

I don't think it would take one or two full 40hr work week(s) to create a Commander, maybe in the sense of "From start to finish" because of the need to communicate back and forth between the artist and the Backer. Even my own commander, which is not a standard scenario and the process has been anything but streamlined, doesn't have more than 20-30 hours put into it I imagine(shamefully I haven't properly tracked it) and it was a far more complex process than what the Uber Artists have to deal with.

Also I'm not sure on your math, assuming 25$/hr the Backer would have technically paid for 20 hours with 500$(Which is the increase from the previous tier in which Custom Commander is the only added bonus) and not 2.5.

Mike

So I include all the time at the artist takes to make them. (consultation, etc) If they getting paid it counts.
Math is hard. Supposed to be 2.5 work days. (25 * 8 = 200 * 2 = 400 + 100 = $500)

edit: The longer it takes more comes out of Uber's budget.

That's with the assumption that they are working on it constantly throughtout the entire week which as I said, I don't feel is realistic. The process as I understand it;

Artist contacts backer to get details(rig type, Uber weapon) and reference materials

Once the backer provides the info the artist works out a buck on concepts then sends those to the backer for thoughts and feedback.

Once the backer replies work can begin on the mesh itself. As the mesh nears completion I'd assume the artist does some quick paint overs for the color layout and sends that to the backer for thoughts feedback again.

Once the backer replies again final mesh work is completed and texturing is done.

One final check in with the backer and if it looks good he commander is done.

I would be surprised to learn that process requires a solid 40-80 hours per commander. I can see it taking a week or two because of the back and forth communication but not because there is actually 40-80 hours worth of work.

Mike

Agreed, all I can go on is assumptions, speculation, and comments from devs which doesn't leave you with all information. Due to your career would have a better knowledge also the tear that you back at would give you more information. It could be that the $500 pays for all of it or not. Just don't know.

Im going to buy the spider commander cause he looks amazing (not the tentical legs).

I dont mind paying this price because i look at it in a different way, the more money uber gets, the more bad azz this game gets and will get in the future.

As long as this game doesnt end up being pay to win i have no problems with this at all.

As an engineer ill put this simply. If you spend $500 for an artist to build a new commander, granted he only has to make
It once. Now say this one commander is sold to 2000 players at $10, minus the cost of making said commander, uber makes $19,500 in profit.

If done right this is a fantasic idea and good marketing planning that can only grow PA to a large well supported game.

I think dlc or commander packs for 10 bucks sounds better, but again im ok with there current plan.

But what about the idea of accessibility? Higher price points do generate more profit on a per-sale basis but they also limit the people capable of taking part. On the other hand a lower price might net them less profit per sale but more people would likely be able to take part and so long as there is a variety of different products to spend money on teh people who can/want to spend more still can on other things.

It's basically the same idea behind the big Steam Sales and why Devs like them, it doesn't matter how discounted your game is you'll be selling so many copies you'll still be making a good profit.

Mike

I suppose the counterargument to that is that most people won't be buying more than one commander, whereas lots of people buy a whole bunch of games in various Steam sales. Thus, the higher price reflects the fact that it's a one-time purchase.

I don't like it when Cola and Knight fight.... it feels like 2 parents arguing.....

What is your assumption based off of? With the possibility of over 100 Backer Commanders that might show up in the armory with everything that might come from Uber over the course of PA's life I find it very hard to believe that most people would only buy one commander. Especially with a very accessible price point.

Mike

I might get a lot of hate for this but I like the exclusivity of the price point. If they were cheap then you would almost be forced to spend a couple dollars to get all those cool commanders. Then you're kinda being taxed to pay that extra ~$5 to get some awesome commanders and don't really have a choice in not spending that extra money. It's also not special at all because everyone will have those commanders too. Pricing at this point means you get a more unique and cooler commander that feels more special. Rather than that thing that everyone has and you felt forced to spend extra on because it didn't cost much to make sure you didn't miss out on an awesome commander (or 3).

No hate from me at all, as the price is really not that bad to me.

Technically, we are not suppose to have access to the 1k backers commanders, it was special just for them, so $10 i think is fair.

You never know, in the future we might have the option to buy texture packs for our units and commanders like camo etc...

I just don't see how that is relevant, it's not like the Backers are being forced to share thier commanders or anything.

Mike

Whilst I do agree with you Mike- you are missing the big point though with selling anything, and that is of perceived value.

Selling something cheaply doesn't necessarily mean you sell more- and in fact charging a higher price for something gives the perception of it being better. Apple are a good example of this (I'm not criticising them here btw, they make some very nice hardware). The key point though is Apple *don't* sell anything cheap. The result is that quite a few friends of mine have moved over in particular to Mac books- and declared them vastly superior to PC's yet when you drill a bit further the laptops they were moving from were bargain basement things from PC world they got for under £400. They then spend over £1000 on a Macbook and lo and behold it's a better machine! If you buy a similarly priced laptop it's quite possible to get something as good as or better (performance wise in particular) than the Macbook, however because laptops are available for £400 people won't consider paying the higher price (as they don't view them as valuable enough).

This applies to digital good as well imo. In the case of commander models- take a set of 5 or so different commanders and without prices do a poll to see which one people preferred. Now make them available for sale at a range of prices *and make the most popular one the cheapest* and repeat the poll. I'm willing to bet that the models with higher price tags will become more popular than before, and the oringally most poplar model will loose favour as people will shift opinions with the prices (it's natural to think- it's more expensive there's obviously *something* better about it). I also think that Uber are testing the waters on pricing here, as with all things there are upper and lower limits to what will work (in Apple's case they offer a premium product *but* they don't go crazy as a general rule- the £1000 - £2000 price range is tolerable for most people, beyond that will result in people walking away).

I guess time will tell- if Uber sell lots of commanders at $5, but very few at $10 they might try adjusting the prices down. If they sell as much (or at least make as much money) at $10 rather than $5 then prices could rise. They are running a company after all.

Exacly sad that not many think like that....

then don´t buy them ... done deal ... uber is not forbidden to make microtransactions ...
also who says that modders may not want to eventualy sell their content in order to get revenue to themselves ... what if no one wants to make or give skins to you? ... what do you want to do then?
torrent them?

A expansion is just a large micro-transaction, and a product is basically just a large expansion.

All are DLC these days, you don't get them off of the shelf.

It's about letting the user have a choice about what they want, rather then only selling set meals.