The Water Elemental Hideout Decoration

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Redblade wrote:

I think you need to re-think hideout decorations as a MtX. I don't oppose the idea but paying for a single decoration like this isn't happening as I'd probably want 5-10 as a bare minimum for any design. At this price, for a decoration like this, I'd say at least a 10 pack should be minimum.

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MoarStuff wrote:

I'm normally one of the first to criticize GGG's MTX pricing scheme. But I'm still suprised why there is so much negative reaction to the general notion that hideout items are priced along the lines of other MTX categories, even without taking the main contender (armour) into account.

Footprints can go up as high as 160 points, character effects up to 420, pets up to 550 and back attachments even up to 640 points. For a pair of wings. That you see 98% of a time in a far zoomed out state or don't even see at all cause of all the explosions on screen.

Compared to those, hideout decorations have probably about the same exposure, cause many players spend a good amount (some even most) of their time in it.
As with other MTX, there are better ones, where you get some bang for your buck. And then you have the less intriguing ones, either because of graphical fidelity (pre-3.0 stuff mostly), a proper "free" alternative to buy with favour points or because it doesn't really work as a standalone piece.

If you compare for example the Innocence/Sin Cathedral Decoration with the Oriath Wall/Fence decoration, there is a clear dissonance there. Both pieces are 60 points, but whereas with the windows you can achieve a truly unique look with just 1-2 pieces, you'd need at least 5-10 wall/fence sections to build anything of note, cause they are smaller than you think (...that's what GGG said).

With hideout decorations, pieces should be priced mainly around the effort it took to create them and, even more importantly, their utility. So I'd say these Water Elemental decorations might be priced right at about 20 points. You'll need at least a handful of them to make any impact, so a price cut of 2/3 seems justified. If you truly believe these should cost only 1-2 points you have your priorities wrong though, cause there is no way that a pair of silly wings could possibly represent 320 times the value of this. Unless that's your fetish.

Bottom line, we have to apply uniform standards when criticizing MTX. We can't complain about 50 point hideout decorations and at the same time continue to happily buy items for the player char for 10 times that much money.

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Shade_RU_N53 wrote:

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omgTeal wrote:

when u have ppl that spent over 5000$ in supporter packs not supporting this. you know you done something wrong.

This. I think it's the best-placed comment here.
Seriously, you should think about re-making the whole idea of hideout MTX. For example, to make a sound theme you'd need dosens of decorations. Let's make it 100 and let's pretend it'll be the one being discussed. Thus, it'll be $500 for the theme? You know that someone will probably buy that. But it's one thing having 10 well-paying "whales", the other is having 50 000 not-so-well-paying people that occasionally get some MTX's. Both are equally good for business (although the first model is far less stable), but are both equally good for attaining respect from community? For example, who in their sane mind will share a hideout template demanding $500 to create? And who in their sane mind will download it?
Unless you want to get into the "I'm not so rich to play free to play games" developer category, you'd do well to rethink your strategy. Remember: greed kills. Just look at EA and Bethesda to see where and how it can derail in an eyeblink.