Commander Prices: Too much?

Are you planning on sharing yours?
My guess is no.

On the other hand this few have shared and they shouldnt come free. You have the backers which get the chance to have a one off commander, and on the other hand you have people that are upset about someone having a commander that they dont. Its very relevant and i dont get why people are against more income for devolopment of the game.

Im glad i dont think that way. "i demand expansions not micro-transactions". Well where are they going to get the money for said expansion?

From the sales of the expansions+the sales of the base game itself...
Things worked like that perfectly for years back in the days...

I wonder what the reaction be if the price goes up

They didn't though, that's the issue. If you don't believe me, just look up how many of the great studious from the 90s are actually still going? The only 2 I can think of are blizzard (selling pay monthly games) and valve (who make money as a distributor and have micro transactions as well as selling complete games). I'd software, still exists but under new ownership. Cavedog, long gone, gpg gone, barking dog studios (homeworld cataclysm- awesome game btw) gone.....

Ultimately, I don't mind having cosmetic microtransactions in a game like this. Here are some reasons why
-There is no change to core game play whether you bought the skins or not.
-The art team is not busy at this stage in development. Allowing them to release things to bring in more profit for the game which funds the implementation of more core concepts/polish to be put into the game is a good thing.
-Mods will be released when PA finally leaves early access state which will undoubtedly change commander cosmetics. Its not like you will be missing out on pretty pixels or whatnot
-This is actually one of if not the fairest way to do microtransactions
-The specific $1k backers (aka the community itself) chose to allow these microtransactions to happen
-Say, for instance, Uber is running over-budget as of now. How else are they going to bring in that extra bit of cashmoney they need to finish up their game without releasing it in a broken state?
-You aren't obligated to buy it

Ultimately, the reasoning behind the pricing of the skins is similar to the reasoning behind the pricing of the very first pre-release build of PA which sold for a whopping $100. Uber didn't want to rip off its backers/people who placed their trust in them by selling the game for a cheaper price than what the backers paid for expecting the same early access to the same game. Just as Uber handled the pre-release build pricing, they do not want to undercut the $1k backers by selling, if I understand correctly, their custom skins as free-LC or $1 DLC or whatnot.

I guess it kinda grinds my gears when people say that cosmetic DLC is indicative of bad buisness practices. In other implementations it might be, but since these specific skins are not using development time better spent elsewhere or causing an unfair advantage to the purchasing player they are perfectly fine in my book. In fact, we should be thankful towards Uber and the $1k backers for showing such support and love back to the rest of the community.

I don't like the $15 price take for a single skin. If the skins are 10-15 dollars just for 1. how much will each expansion pack be $70US? Makes no sense business wise if you ask me.

They're optional, they're cosmetic, and don't affect gameplay.

That's why. Uber can charge as much as they want. You can choose not to buy them, and your game is unaffected.

It's true. But most of these studios died because of a/some game failure.
Cavedog : Total Annihilation Kingdoms.
GpG : decline started after SupComm...
Barking Dog Studios : buyed back by Rockstar
ID Software : departure of most of historic members, plus they earned HUGE load of money with Commander Keen, Doom, Quake & Wolfenstein for various projects that were money sinkholes.

The plan worked, but some bad choices later killed/armed the studios.


Other point :
An other thing about what bother me about the sale of Custom Commanders :

For me, it's a complete brake of word...

Edit : Typos and adding some info.

Uber aren't selling the custom commanders or making them available without the agreement of the backer. @KNight can probably provide a bit more info on this.

If they want it to be 'just for them', they can. Uber give them the option to make it available.

Didn't knew that. My bad. Missed the info >_<

Yeah I agree with you, I think the key point is though that with the 'old model' 1 (or maximum 2) failures is the end of the studio. The newer model looks to create a long lasting, constantly updated platform, that generates a steady income over it's life span. It's a much more sustainable proposition from a business perspective. The question then becomes, how do you generate that regular income- the options boil down to either monthly subscription (WOW / MMO model) or micro transactions. Now PA appears to be taking a third route which is deriving it's main income from sales (traditional) supplemented with a few choice micro transactions and with the future plan of treating the game as a 'platform' for user created content that can be sold giving Uber a small cut.

I personally think it's quite a neat plan if it works out, and the key here is the micro transactions in PA are completely voluntary whereas most games make them mandatory one way or another (e.g. WOW is free to play to level 50, then you have to pay once its got you hooked, other games the micro transactions give access to items that you either can't progress without or put you at a major disadvantage if you don't get them).

Don't get me wrong, my battle here is not against the micro-transaction (that is evil for every kind except cosmetic), but against the prices of the Skins.

I consider complete imfamy to sell a skin 1/3 of the game's price...

Yeah the price could come down a bit, when it comes to pricing though my advice to anyone is simply 'vote with your feet' (i.e if it's too expensive don't buy it). There is obviously interest in the skins, if they don't sell any (or very few) then I don't doubt the price will get adjusted down accordingly.

Cavedog died due to being spread across too many games and their publisher backing out.