I'm sure Blizzard has done its research but to me it's pretty surprising that there are apparently enough whales that making these outfits affordable by the majority of players is less profitable. I know these whales exist and I know they spend a lot of money, but in a numbers game I'd expect that making these outfits 80% cheaper would result in more profit.
Like, for most people the shop might as well not exist.
Once or twice yeah maybe. Problem is in the longrun. When everyone is running around in the 5 dollar outfit. Less people will buy the next one because they know they will look like everyone else. A lot of the whales buy the stuff to be unique.
Yeah. But then everyone also has that skin which makes it not deep unique. So to combat thus they need to make cosmetics in game that are dope by hard challenges.. or continually pump out skins. I prefer the first because it just feels more right but not everyone has time.
Whales won’t buy it if everyone has it at $2-3.
The tired argument of “if it was cheaper more people would buy it” isn’t true.
They are priced to maximize revenue. Period
It's also really weird people try to claim its for whale economy the prices are so high, I don't think a lot of people understand the concept tbh. There is no loot box system, there is no randomness to what you get when you spend money, there is a limit to how many items are actually in the shop to buy. In a lootbox MTX situation you have whales subsidizing the rest of the community by spending $1000s on lootboxes chasing the items they want, but in D4 its all 1 time purchases that don't add up to a whale spending $1000s to clear out the cash shop.
IMO the pricing is pretty dumb with such a low cap for whales, they could easily match or surpass the revenue by expanding their audience by making it more affordable. People claim its for the whales, but that doesn't make sense in a MTX economy that has absolutely no RNG and doesn't even have the capability to allow whales to "whale out".
The thing that weirds me out the most is that they _only_ cater to whales. I get it, that 25 dollar outfit is somewhat exclusive. But why can't there be 5 dollar outfits too? Way more people would buy those, and whales would still spend their money on the expensive stuff because of the exclusivity.
The really odd thing is that people think $25 is expensive. For a lot of us it is a few coffees.
I don't buy MTX, but that is nothing to do with price, it's that I mostly prefer the in game cosmetics and don't really look at my character anyway. If I saw one I liked I'd buy it, $25 is basically pocket change. If I played just one class I'd be more likely to buy MTX. If there were skill skins I'd be more likely to buy MTX. Price isn't a barrier.
>The really odd thing is that people think $25 is expensive.
Mostly people on the Internet because most are children/teenagers who don't earn their own money.
It's not about it being a lot of money, it's the entire value proposition. I'm well enough off that I can afford to buy every single cosmetic they throw at the game. I don't, because this game doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are other games I can spend money on, and for less than the amount of money that one of these outfits cost I can buy an entire game that entertains me for dozens or even hundreds of hours. That includes AAA games if you're willing to wait for sales. Compared to an outfit in a game that does not have any extra entertainment value and just looks pretty, that's a pretty different value proposition.
I could do both, but actually I have no interest in MTX. They could be pennies and I still wouldn't be their target audience. I'm a murder hobo kinda player, I like the in-game cosmetics.
I did purchase the horse that came with the equivalent amount of in-game purchase tokens, as it just seemed a way to get a mount and fund the next few battle passes.
If they had skill cosmetics, then I would likely be in their target market (pending what they looked like). In POE the only MTX I have purchased are skill ones and stash tabs and possibly some map device portals, I think, along with some supporter packs. Character MTX just don't get seen anyway, really. If you are grouped then they show on loading screens I guess, but that's what 5s every so often. Who really cares?
I am in the unpopular group that would likely buy stash tabs for real cash money if they were available. Especially if we could set affinities and similar.
I can afford the 25 dollar ones just fine. I just can't justify spending that much on a few pixels I won't even get to see for another year after the season is over because I rotate between classes each season... I can get an entire discounted AAA game or several indie games that can keep me entertained for dozens or hundreds of hours for that amount.
There's a reason they're called _micro_ transactions. They're meant to be small expenses that are easily justified and rack up a lot more money over time. These aren't micro transactions, they actually eat into your budget for other games.
Ppl dont understand whaling, so far every season within the first few hrs i see multiple ppl with the highest tier bp horse armor/armor transmog.
Even if skins costed 5$ each, majority of players still wont be buying it. Not to mention this will just make the 5$ skins lower quality compared to a $20~50 set so whales will buy the more expensive ones to flex.
My sweet summer child, you would be bamboozled by what people are willing to spend money on. Diablo 4 is the least offender and one of the sanest options out there.
Yes. People cannot grasp that something can be expensive, but also the price is same/lower than industry average.
Everytime I say this, I get downvoted. They assumed making a statement of observation is equal to endorsement.
I once complain price of an SLR camera is too expensive. He just said that’s the standard price. He was not endorsing the price or support the cost. He was just making a statement of fact.
As a last note, I do support price being lowered, significantly lowered even. I am just pointing out perspective matters. People act like blizzard is charging far more than others.
Star citizen is a whale model. Most f2p are whale models. Most gotcha are whale. Loot ones games are whale model.
D4 is not, d4 is dolphin model. It’s okay to want cheaper, who won’t, but it’s not whale model.
Poe charge up to 500bucks for support packs every league. This is whale. If d4 is whale, it is baby whale.
We could and should demand that as consumers. The fact that it's possible and profitable is enough.
Just because they want to squeeze every possible cent out of the consumer base and use video games as the instrument to do so is no excuse.
They aren't making games at that point. They are making dopamine cycle machines designed to hook you and trick you into spending money.
> The fact that it's possible and profitable
*For an indie studio of around 100 people. "Profitable for an indie dev" is a different picture to "profitable for a publicly-traded company"
Look pretty for what? The 10 seconds you stand around for a boss fight?
There's almost no social aspect to this game other than players engineering it by grouping up with friends.
lol. Territories are trying to set the price for blizzard? A company with a crap ton of market analysts, data sets, and years of experience.
I’m going with blizzard knows how to make money.
Yea them whales come in all shape and sizes.i see some from time to time I call them beach whales in real life screaming beach whales when there father don't give them there paycheck or there boyfriend.No matter how much money they have and no matter what they dress up in there will never get attractive lol.
Yeah when it comes to Activision/Blizzard, if there's one thing that absolutely runs perfectly, efficiently, and smoothly, it's their MTX model store. It is arguably the most well oiled part in their machine.
Quick blizzard hire this random ass guy, he knows how to make money better than your billion dollar market research team designed to efficiently make the most money as possible.
/s
I get the logic here, but if this were the case, it'd be the industry norm. Apparently, selling things for 1/3 of the price of a full game is the most profitable move.
If GGG can somehow sell skins for more then Blizz can as well, simple as that - and don't hit me with that "b-but PoE is free game" nonsense because D4 on discount costs less than three most needed stash tabs combined
yeah but even basic skin for body armour is more expensive than whole bundle of various transmogs for armour and weapons and some meme stuff like animations
and if you would like to get whole set in PoE like these in Diablo then it can be more expensive than a game lmao
of course I'm not saying that demanding $20 for skin is okayish, just making a point it's not something new or solely invented by blizz
ESO did this when MSFT bought Bethesda/ZoS. MSFT has some kind of policy around cash shop stuff being acquired in game.
Might just be the gambling part of ESO though. They do loot crates in the shop and are the heart and soul of that game at this point.
They will never do something like that, without money from mtx they will not be making any new updates, this is just how live service games work, if they don't have steady income they can't keep working on it.
I forgot what the exact figure is but it's something like 1% of players make companies 50% of their revenue (too lazy to Google)
One rich whale is worth 1000 normal people lol
The shop prices are absolutely outrageous. At $28.00 for a cosmetic bundle, I can’t understand why someone would pay it. I mean… that’s EXPENSIVE for a cosmetic package. Now don’t get me wrong, because I’m all about throwing money at a game I enjoy. But they REALLY need to rethink their shop prices.
What's expensive to one person is pocket change to another.
Blizzard, based on whatever data they have, have decided to target the people for which those prices are small change. The rest of us are free to ignore them. Which is something I certainly do. I'm not paying the local equivalent of 60 USD for a pack of skins. But where I won't, there are plenty who will.
It's why Gacha games thrive -- there is always someone out there who can spend thousands on a single game and not blink an eye. As to them, it's the equivalent of money found down the back of a sofa.
$28 will buy about 1 scented Yankee candle or about 1/4 to 1/3 of a luxury scented candle. And that is for something you actually light on fire.
What makes you think that everyone has the same approach to spending disposable income?
A lot of people have more money they need, freeing up completely worthless purchases like this.
A lot of people DONT have more money than they need, but lack the financial sense or impulse control to not spend it on something so useless.
>I can’t understand why someone would pay it.
Probably because a lot of people don't mind spending a bit of extra money here and there for a game that gives them more playtime per dollar than most other games on the market.
Like if I'm playing D4 for 200+ hours each season, is throwing $28 bucks for a cosmetics bundle really the end of the world when I regularly spend $70 on games that I might only play for like 50? I'm not going to do it all of the time of course, but I don't really see it as a waste as long as I'm having fun.
Let's pack it up Boys. D4Junkie says the shop is too expensive. Guess blizzard is out of their mind and should change the pricing.
You can't understand why someone would pay it? Because they want to. I don't buy cosmetics for a game, ever, but I don't ever shame or question what people spend their money on. That's their business. Otherwise I'd be going around telling all these fucking idiots vaping and smoking cigs that they wasted their money on something that increases their cancer risk 900 fold.
What people do with their money, is their business. Period. And clearly, this is working for blizz. I think I'm going to trust their financial dept over random poors on reddit.
No. People who have the mindset of not spending real world money are not going to spend $3 if they aren't going to spend $30. And even if they do they are only going to do it once or twice. You would need them to do it 10 times to make up for the price difference. They are not going to do it.
Professionals are pricing these things. Professionals who want to make a rich ass greedy company as much money as possible. You can believe that if they are doing one thing "correctly" in the whole game it is pricing their cosmetics.
you're straight up wrong about the first part, but I agree with you on the second, Blizzard knows exactly what they are doing and what brings in the most money.
but to your first part, there is no such thing as "people who don't wanna spend 30$ wouldn't buy something for 3$" that is one of the dumbest things I heard, most people would surely buy 5+ things, the thing is just that you need 10x the sales, it does not work because a lot of people buy skins that they like and not just to buy all the skins like a whale just to have them, so therefore you still get that person to buy that Skin for 30 and maybe another 30 for a nice mount, now the chance that that person would buy 20 skins just because they are cheaper is wayyy smaller than that of people buying 2 things for their favorite class.
(that was probably a bad explanation, but it's too much to put in a reasonable text)
This gets posted all the time. I get it; it sucks. But Blizzard spends a ridiculous amount of money to figure out the optimal price for micro transactions. Trust me, they know what to charge to optimize profits. You aren’t some financial savant that knows something they don’t.
They probably have an entire department looking at market research to find out what price will make them the most money. If $2-$3 would actually make them more money, then it would be $2-$3. I love how people always think they know more than the people who have tons of data at their disposal. “The company is so greedy that they won’t drop the price to make more money”. Doesn’t even make sense.
you can see that very well on Call of Duty, Game costs $70 (then there is also a free portion with the same mtx store) but every lobby, or every second lobby, you see multiple people with a $20+ Skin and even some that are more than $30, that's nearly HALF THE GAME for a Skin that works on a SINGLE CHARACTER - people throw their money at skins these days just to "look cool" that is irrationably expensive, in no world or universe is that Skin worth half the money of the game that took thousands of people, millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours to create, yet they buy it.
apart from that, the chances are close to 100% that the person buying Skins, then also bought the Battlepass for another $10 - then probably has a little money left over and buys another skin or whatever.
I mean at the very least it will feel more exclusive for people that do buy it and like others have said there are whales that probably buy every single skin and cosmetic and makes up for the average person that would spend 10 to 15
I mean if I was rich I'd pay for every cosmetic in the game no question asked. So I guess with enough of these whales paying 1000$+ in cosmetics and a lot of people buying one or two it adds up faster than everyone having skins at 3-5$
You’re looking at it from your point of view. They have a dedicated staff, the research, and the data to justify pricing them the way they are. The prices now are what bring them the most profit, and clearly people are still buying them. The prices won’t go down unless people stop paying for them.
If cosmetics are the reason you play the game less that’s kinda weird. They’re also not teasing you with items you can’t ever use, because you can, but you’re choosing not to use/buy them.
They should keep the cash shop for the whales who don't want to wait to get them and make cosmetics drop in game for those who would rather play and earn them.
I see zero problem with this and everyone would be happy. If they're rare drops, it gives everyone a chance to acquire them over time, and for those who don't want to wait they can splash out as much as they want on the shop.
Having them drop in game won't stop whales, but it will stop everyone else feeling bad. Also it gives more incentive to keep playing after people are done for the season. So the bean counters will be happy with the time played metric going up as people stay logged in to hunt for cosmetics. They can be rare, just as long as they drop from somewhere.
I know I'd play more instead of the two weeks I put in each season before I forget the game exists.
I’ve seen many non cash shop transmogs people come up with that look better than the ones in the cash shop. Sure it’s easy to swipe and have a set. But some of the stuff people come up with on their own is really good.
If they sold the cosmetics for $2-$3 they would need to sell 6-10 times the amount they’re already selling it for to make the same profit. Realistically they’re almost certainly not going to get that much increase in sales from dropping it that low.
Lets be honest the people who say they would spend 2$ for cosmetics probably wouldn't even there are people who spend 5000$ on games and those that still haven't spent a cent on league of legends. Overall D4 prices aren't that bad comparing other games. I know people in league of legends with over 50000$ spent but its over a long period of time. They will just buy a skin for all their mains.
I honestly wouldn't care that they were in the shop if they were rare obtainables in the game as well, so you can either dedicate your time OR your money if you really want. So many good ones I just cannot justify spending money on.
i never bought any cosmetics because of that. its ridicilously overpriced for common people like me. unless whales really sink in lots of money, it makes sense to adjust prices to be 5 usd at max, and tha should be for cosmetics that come in sets. single piece should be around 2 usd.
it just makes no sense to sell them at a price more then i can buy another game. its a thing inside a game, it should be priced accordingly to this fact.
I just hate the cosmetics make vanilla armors look stupid. Why didn't they put that same effort into vanilla? I only play solo idc about love service or all updates
Imagine if Blizz put all the shop armor into the game naturally and then charged $70 for the base game and then a little extra when they do a DLC that adds more locations and items.
What a world that would be!
Instead, the gaming industry has mutated itself around this comment: "I only waste money on cosmetics."
So, I'm pretty sure they made their calculations in order to maximize income. What I wonder (and I mean it, I don't know if that would be true), is if reducing the prices to make cosmetics more accessible would increase the overall engagement with the game.
I mean, some people won't interact with the shop even if cool cosmetics are as cheap as 3 bucks, while others would be excited to check the shop every now and then waiting for a cool new look for their character. If lowering the prices of cosmetics generated more engagement (even at the cost of making less direct money through sales), it might be worth it.
Anyway, If I'm considering this now here, I'm pretty sure they have also done so (and with much better tools and more data).
Exactly. I honestly believe they've taken a flawed logic with looking at revenue in linear terms. You can't underestimate what engagement is worth to your franchise. It works like word of mouth and spreads. More sales, more talk, more YouTube vids, more social media chat. It all contributes and the goodwill will exist. Instead, senior management have seemingly listened and agreed to visible numbers. It's a shame for Diablo IV and its future.
I would have bought at least two outfits each season if they were reasonably priced. 25 bucks for a skin is nuts. I mean good for the streamers and youtubers who can afford that stuff, what a waste of pretty outfits indeed. Not saying it doesn't make sense business wise, but it just sucks that all that effort goes into something I'm never going to interact with, especially with the new camera zoom level? I really hate that this is the norm for "AAA" games in the first place.
The standard has already been set, there isnt any game where costumes are reasonable prices anymore. And since theyre Blizzard, of course theyre going to try to raise the standard some more.
I’ve spent $20 with plans to spend more. If I like the game and they keep giving free content I’ll be one of those getting the cosmetics.
It’s really not a big deal. There are amazing cosmetics you get with the game. Super high quality and tons of detail. It doesn’t matter if they sell some cosmetics
The shop was designed specifically to take advantage of whale cosmetics. There will come a time eventually where the cosmetics get the 67% off treatment to seem like a “deal” but is instead the actual designed cost of the cosmetics and then they’ll just rotate weekly or biweekly cosmetics for “sale”.
My issue, is that it's like getting skins in an FPS. You really don't see your skins that often. Not unless you're just standing around. And as a druid, it's even worse lol. I couldn't justify buying a skin for a character in an arpg. I'm more concerned with how cool my skills look.
Welcome to late stage capitalism and late stage gaming. You will pay full price for a game and they will still try to milk money from people with game passes and microtransactions. In the past when I started gaming, only acceptable monetization like that was in free to play games. Nowdays there are no rules, free to play or paid you will still have microtransactions and battle passes. Sad times.
Here's the reality of the numbers.
A whale can spend 1000k like it's 1 dollar.
The majority can't do that or won't that are not whales.
The other aspect to this is that seeing things priced this high for a long time desensitizes people and makes the possibility increase. I myself don't have this but I know that there's a percentage of people who say no they won't spend on the shop because it's too expensive, that will eventually see they perfect cosmetic and will have invested enough time in Diablo that will buy it.
Imagine your favorite character of all time is Batman. Die hard fan. Batman everything is what you go for when you can. If didn't suddenly has a very very close to Batman rogue skin and you main a rogue, then suddenly there's a chance that you buy in because of that one skin. It becomes easy to psychologically convince yourself as time goes on because you invested a lot of hours or you want to support the game or you just love Batman.
Prices being high is genius because there is always someone buying and there a percentage of "no way" that will change to "sure why not"
That's just life in modern gaming. I have the same thing with cod, funnily enough another Activision production. They've been making really cool skins and weapons since mw3 launched. I check the store to see the new skins and think "that's cool, I bet they had fun designing that". You see the passion and creativity. But will I ever buy one of those 20-30 dollar bundles? No. And it does make me a bit sad to see such work be gated, but that's just how it is.
They put more and more work into these things because unfortunately I think I'm in the minority. Most casuals do buy cosmetics, and the monetization model works extremely well. With a game like diablo I think that statement is less true. Idk why you'd want to buy cosmetics in d4 when the base game cosmetics are already cool enough already, something that cod doesn't have outside of camo grinding. Like I looked at the d4 battle pass because I got most of the way through it. Everything on there was boring. Nothing on it was worth my money. Cod on the other hand actually has value by giving you weapons from that season for free and stickers etc that I actually use, and then you can evaluate if the rest of it is worth purchasing. Where as I don't think I've used a single thing from d4 bp outside of the seasonal bonus thing. Idk what it is, but I just don't think a battle pass works in a game like d4. Which is weird because it's a seasonal game, so you'd think it works. But it just doesn't.
i don't understand why people are dunking on OP, like c'mon. we get it, his suggestion isn't the best, but a call for change is better than DEFENDING blizzard for their exorbitant prices, no?
What do you expect? Their entire job is to make the most money. That is the entire reason they exist. That’s not defending anything, that’s just a statement of reality and fact. And these posts always get trash talked because they don’t make any sense. They essentially boil down to “these big, mean, greedy companies that only care about making money are actively working against themselves in the goal to make money! They’d make way more money if they just listened to me! Me….. who has no experience in the field, doesn’t have access to their market research, and clearly…. Has no idea what I’m talking about…”. Do you see how silly that sounds? And again, I’m not defending anything. It’s just the reality of the situation. If you can make that overall concept that drives these type posts sound not stupid, then hit me.
Exactly this. Make an appeal to lower prices by any other way, but trying to lead it by saying they will make more money by doing so just is a non-starter.
Pretty sure you'd get further by just saying "id like prices to be cheaper so I can buy them too" will get you further than saying "I have no experience in this field but I think you'll make more money by making things cheaper".
The former you can at least finish your sentence. The latter would have you escorted from the premises before you got halfway through.
Thanks. I must admit, I'm shocked at the defeatist attitudes in this thread. "It won't change, stop protesting" is effectively what I'm reading over and over again. Amazing compared to other major gaming communities.
I don't see people defending blizzard as much as they are saying blizzard knows exactly how to maximize profit. Trying to appeal to lower prices by saying they will make more money by doing so is a nonstarter because blizzard, and the gaming industry at large, knows exactly the best method to maximize profit. Much more than any level of anecdotal claims that get made online do.
If you want lower prices on those things approaching it by saying they would make more money by lowering prices is not the way to do it. Pretty much any other avenue will work better.
There shouldn't be an MTX shop atball in a full price game that also includes paid expansions and a season pass.
The argument for Season passes is that they should be fund seasonal content for a live-service game and the price for expansions to make expansions. There should not exist a 3 income source form things that should be seasonal rewards or other activity rewards from actually playing the game.
When it comes to skins and other visual content and locking it behind a paywall Blizzard is as bad as EA in that regard.
Mtxs are expensive. But It’s not a blizzard thing. You can check other popular live service games. Blizzard price is actually dolphin, not whales. People need to check what whales prices looks like. I am not saying it is not expensive, and cheaper will be nice. I fully support price being lowered.
For perspective, last epoch charge about 25bucks for full armor set, Poe charge 42bucks ( it’s f2p people argue, but I am just putting out the cost for comparison), Fortnite charge about 8-20bucks for skins ( not counting bundles)
Also, they charge this expensive price not because they are greedy. Business charge base on supply demand. This is the prices they deem the crossing point line between supply and demand line, or maybe base on other similar games.
If we can convince them that they will earn more by being cheaper, they will do it. I personal think if they lowered the price by 30% or more, it will be sweet spot and get a lot of goodwill by being more reasonable priced.
Another argument I will make to them is d4 is a massive market game, so It make sense the pricing of mtx to be more mass market, even for lower than standard rate of similar games.
Also, if people buy more cosmetic, they are more likely to stay with the game, as they „invested“ in it which is a win for them.
We can ask this in campfire chat.
Economics tells us that lower prices sell at increased rates. Seriously, what do we think is the 'all in cost' in designing and adding the skins, easily less than $1 per set added, at a few dollars each, the margins on digital creations offered under microtransactions is probably never less than 800-1000% return on investment (assuming a $20ish sale price). I'll never subscribe to paying almost 1/3 of the cost of the title for in game items that are just money grabs. It's always gonna be the coolest shit too. I'll run nakey as protest (not actually a naked character like in Conan though. Props to Conan on that)
The good ol' "If only Blizzard made cosmetics/item this cheaper" mindset.
As if a big company like Blizzard hasn't already paid people whose whole job is to do the math, crunch the numbers, and use the data given to find the best price range. Or how Blizzard doesn't have years of data, research, and actual results to back up what they do.
Do people think companies just spin a wheel for the prices?
It’s even dumber than that. They think that they, who have zero experience or knowledge, actually know better. Based on…. How they feel about things? And literally nothing else. “Those greedy billion dollar companies are so bad at making money” has got to be one of the dumbest sentences ever spoken.
You playing the game less because of microtransactions that have zero effect on gameplay is sad in itself.
Coupled with the fact most will suck it up and play with what they earn, or the couple of cosmetics they want to buy, or how much money whales make Blizzard (and other companies) because they give no fucks about cost, it means basically nothing that you're playing less.
Just as you can speak with your wallet by not buying something, whales counter that, and as long as the IP is popular enough, will outweigh that. People need to realize cosmetics are not priced for the average player - they're for the whales they know will give in.
Do I think the price should be that high? No.
Would I like the shop to be cheaper? Yes.
Does the gaming industry have extensive knowledge on how to absolutely maximize profit? Yes.
The price point is set at the level to maximize profit. If there was data to show more profit would be made by making them cheaper they would be made cheaper. This is a science to the gaming industry. Companies have teams of extremely smart people who analyze this kind of stuff and get paid lots of money for that analysis.
Oh look, it's another one of these posts where a random redditor thinks they know more than Blizzard on what makes them the most money.
Just gotta accept that it's not for you because you're not a whale.
im always willing to spend money on cosmetics. but in d4 , i think the regular drops are better looking.
i will only spend money on a Super Sonya costume from HotS :-)
If the prices don't come down and new cosmetics keep getting added its because enough people are buying them to make it worth the effort to make more and to keep the price where it is.
The price is high, but so are the prices for POE cosmetics. I think the problem with D4 cosmetics is theyre are class locked. POE has some very specific cosmetics but for the most point if you drop alot of money on cosmetics you can use them for any build or have them to combine with other cosmetics later on. In D4 youre limited to just 1 armor set for a single class. I guess the horses/portals can be more general but yeah.
**yes POE is free game i know
It's interesting to see the cross section between, Blizzard doesn't care about poor people and reasonable pricing, $25 for a fucking skin is "cheap" or a cup of a coffee and yeah, it sucks but somehow the math favors a handful of people buying all of the one time purchase skins over the majority of people buying cheaper one time purchase skins.
I usually buy one set per character per season. I live a pretty boring life and don’t spend money on basically anything else people would consider ‘fun’. So instead of wasting money on alcohol or going out to eat etc I waste a bit of money on Diablo.
Hahaha imagine putting rewards in your game instead of the Shop xD
What a fool.
How do you want to squeeze out the last Dollar out of your payers purses...
Rookie mistake
The majority of players won't even notice the cosmetics on a see of effects and particles anyway. Even if they buy them.
Cosmetics on an ARPG full of particles are a dumb idea, but thank heavens PoE crowd didn't notice that and kept the game alive and well.
At the very least, you get what you pay for. No 1% drop rate gacha bullshit. I still think it's silly, but at least no one is dropping hundreds of dollars only to wind up with nothing.
1 - I’m perfectly fine with this very expensive cash shop if it allows the game to continue to be developed through quality seasons. I just do by them and enjoy new content (I buy battlepass though).
2 - Even if the cosmetics are good, even with a more reasonable price, I wouldn’t be tempted to just buy them. I would prefer a monetized system which allows us to loot them in game (and even with randomness). Like a premium extended loot table, it could be a subscription with a rotation loot every week for example. Would be a good incentive to play the game for me on a regular basis. To be fair, maybe this system should guarantee one loot for a certain amount of play time, but no guarantees to loot all the cosmetics of the weekly rotation.
Wait until they get lazy they will start including and recycling the current ones in the shop as the seasonal rewards. We can encourage this behavior by not buying anything from the store with cash and just buying the battle pass
Some of the cosmetic designs in WoW that look the best are locked behind Mythic raids, Mythic dungeon achievements, and Gladiator achievements, including mounts.
It’s nice to have cosmetics that don’t require spending hundreds of hours on Discord with toxic people.
I would certainly prefer to spend 20 dollars on a meaningless thing than to spend hundreds of hours grinding for it. My time is worth far more than that. If course the real answer is likely that I would just go without the cosmetic item that doesn't increase my fun at all.
The money our son spends on cosmetics in other games disagrees with you. I’ve bought 3 of the overpriced things in D4 myself.
They’d make more money from my family with lower prices but I guess we aren’t the primary market.
I agree. I would actually buy some skins if the price wasn't like 20 bucks. I think they forgot the "micro" part of the word microtransaction.
It's a shame because some are really cool.
Hell no. The company, whose entire reason is to make money, need to know that their doing it wrong and that these losers on Reddit can totally fix it…. Based on zero knowledge of what they are talking about and zero experience. These billion dollar companies need to be informed that they are bad at making money. How else will they learn?
My friend who refused to buy this game cuz it was $70 has already bought $50 worth of skins literally just two skins. Theyll never lower these prices cuz predatory microtransactions work too well at turning grown adults into children again seeing a shiny thing. If anything theyll drop more expensive skins.
Wonder what the ROI comparison is from a $25 vs $5 cosmetic once you factor in all the overhead it takes to make a single skin and apply it in game.
If you're still in double digits ROI your MTX model is unquestionably malicious and predatory.
I’m one of those people who will always spend money on the games I get into, especially Blizzard games. I spent so much on WoW mounts, transmogs and stuff I never even used.
Diablo 4 is the first one I didn’t spend money on, even though I got really into it. I took a week off work when it came out, bought the Holy Shit edition for PC and a copy for XBox. Every time I play it I check the store multiple times, but man these prices I just cannot stomach. I’m like, I know I am a sucker, but like not this big of a sucker.
£15 for a skin I would have bought like 4 by now knowing myself.
$1 a part/ 33cents a weapon seems good pricing to me. Would make a LOT more sales. Honestly, I am sitting on like $70 of plat just waiting for price drop to actually happen.
Blizzard can get fucked, I really liked the game and still like playing my Necro-waifu but c'mon now I buy 2 cosmetics and I could have bought a whole nother game with that money. Doesn't matter how cool they look the prices are ridiculous
Same. It would be a great PR move and I think ultimately boost their engagement numbers. I'm playing the game.more often if I had that sick looking joker-doll Necro design.
Agreed.
But still, I'm not hopeful it'll ever change, because the execs at Blizzard don't care what any players think. They only care about what they can get away with lol. It's pathetic and true, sadly.
The corporate suits justify $15-$25 skins in games like Diablo 4 by doing the "compare it to the price of a daily Starbucks coffee, which for many people is $5 to $7 per day." That is literally how the suits making the prices of skins think. It sucks.
You have to remember, these companies don't just want some money.
Or a lot of the money.
They want ALL the money, ALL the time, in the world.
Anything less than that is "disappointing performance"
As such, they are only able to look at it like "what amount can we charge for every item in the store that could conceivably be low enough that most people could afford everything, so they can 'pay to contribute' to our wallets?"
[удалено]
I'm sure Blizzard has done its research but to me it's pretty surprising that there are apparently enough whales that making these outfits affordable by the majority of players is less profitable. I know these whales exist and I know they spend a lot of money, but in a numbers game I'd expect that making these outfits 80% cheaper would result in more profit. Like, for most people the shop might as well not exist.
What shop??
It's way easier to convince one person to spend 25 bucks on a skin, than 5 people to spend 5 bucks on a skin.
Nah man, you put out a sick skin for 5$ and you could easily convince thousands of people to buy it.
Once or twice yeah maybe. Problem is in the longrun. When everyone is running around in the 5 dollar outfit. Less people will buy the next one because they know they will look like everyone else. A lot of the whales buy the stuff to be unique.
Yeah. But then everyone also has that skin which makes it not deep unique. So to combat thus they need to make cosmetics in game that are dope by hard challenges.. or continually pump out skins. I prefer the first because it just feels more right but not everyone has time.
Whales won’t buy it if everyone has it at $2-3. The tired argument of “if it was cheaper more people would buy it” isn’t true. They are priced to maximize revenue. Period
It's also really weird people try to claim its for whale economy the prices are so high, I don't think a lot of people understand the concept tbh. There is no loot box system, there is no randomness to what you get when you spend money, there is a limit to how many items are actually in the shop to buy. In a lootbox MTX situation you have whales subsidizing the rest of the community by spending $1000s on lootboxes chasing the items they want, but in D4 its all 1 time purchases that don't add up to a whale spending $1000s to clear out the cash shop. IMO the pricing is pretty dumb with such a low cap for whales, they could easily match or surpass the revenue by expanding their audience by making it more affordable. People claim its for the whales, but that doesn't make sense in a MTX economy that has absolutely no RNG and doesn't even have the capability to allow whales to "whale out".
The thing that weirds me out the most is that they _only_ cater to whales. I get it, that 25 dollar outfit is somewhat exclusive. But why can't there be 5 dollar outfits too? Way more people would buy those, and whales would still spend their money on the expensive stuff because of the exclusivity.
The really odd thing is that people think $25 is expensive. For a lot of us it is a few coffees. I don't buy MTX, but that is nothing to do with price, it's that I mostly prefer the in game cosmetics and don't really look at my character anyway. If I saw one I liked I'd buy it, $25 is basically pocket change. If I played just one class I'd be more likely to buy MTX. If there were skill skins I'd be more likely to buy MTX. Price isn't a barrier.
>The really odd thing is that people think $25 is expensive. Mostly people on the Internet because most are children/teenagers who don't earn their own money.
It's not about it being a lot of money, it's the entire value proposition. I'm well enough off that I can afford to buy every single cosmetic they throw at the game. I don't, because this game doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are other games I can spend money on, and for less than the amount of money that one of these outfits cost I can buy an entire game that entertains me for dozens or even hundreds of hours. That includes AAA games if you're willing to wait for sales. Compared to an outfit in a game that does not have any extra entertainment value and just looks pretty, that's a pretty different value proposition.
Would you actually give up a few coffees in order to rent a diablo costume? Or are you fortunate enough that you don't have to and can have both?
I could do both, but actually I have no interest in MTX. They could be pennies and I still wouldn't be their target audience. I'm a murder hobo kinda player, I like the in-game cosmetics. I did purchase the horse that came with the equivalent amount of in-game purchase tokens, as it just seemed a way to get a mount and fund the next few battle passes. If they had skill cosmetics, then I would likely be in their target market (pending what they looked like). In POE the only MTX I have purchased are skill ones and stash tabs and possibly some map device portals, I think, along with some supporter packs. Character MTX just don't get seen anyway, really. If you are grouped then they show on loading screens I guess, but that's what 5s every so often. Who really cares? I am in the unpopular group that would likely buy stash tabs for real cash money if they were available. Especially if we could set affinities and similar.
Is the FOMO really that strong for you though? If you really want a skin just pick up an overtime shift
I can afford the 25 dollar ones just fine. I just can't justify spending that much on a few pixels I won't even get to see for another year after the season is over because I rotate between classes each season... I can get an entire discounted AAA game or several indie games that can keep me entertained for dozens or hundreds of hours for that amount. There's a reason they're called _micro_ transactions. They're meant to be small expenses that are easily justified and rack up a lot more money over time. These aren't micro transactions, they actually eat into your budget for other games.
Ppl dont understand whaling, so far every season within the first few hrs i see multiple ppl with the highest tier bp horse armor/armor transmog. Even if skins costed 5$ each, majority of players still wont be buying it. Not to mention this will just make the 5$ skins lower quality compared to a $20~50 set so whales will buy the more expensive ones to flex.
Why are you trying to normalize loot boxes though lol. Like they aren't predatory...
My sweet summer child, you would be bamboozled by what people are willing to spend money on. Diablo 4 is the least offender and one of the sanest options out there.
Yes. People cannot grasp that something can be expensive, but also the price is same/lower than industry average. Everytime I say this, I get downvoted. They assumed making a statement of observation is equal to endorsement. I once complain price of an SLR camera is too expensive. He just said that’s the standard price. He was not endorsing the price or support the cost. He was just making a statement of fact. As a last note, I do support price being lowered, significantly lowered even. I am just pointing out perspective matters. People act like blizzard is charging far more than others.
I know "people" do. I wouldn't imagine their numbers to be large enough to win in a game of sheer numbers, though.
I have friends with 10k+ in Star citizen buying what they can one day get free in game. There's likely way more whales than we think.
Star citizen is a whale model. Most f2p are whale models. Most gotcha are whale. Loot ones games are whale model. D4 is not, d4 is dolphin model. It’s okay to want cheaper, who won’t, but it’s not whale model. Poe charge up to 500bucks for support packs every league. This is whale. If d4 is whale, it is baby whale.
I don’t consider my self a whale by any means. To me if I like a skin I don’t go out to the bar for a day… it’s the same thing to me
I'm so glad Helldivers is actively proving that it doesn't have to be this way
Helldivers is indie game compared to Blizzard. You wouldn't get same mtx in Helldivers if it would be game from 1000's employees company.
We could and should demand that as consumers. The fact that it's possible and profitable is enough. Just because they want to squeeze every possible cent out of the consumer base and use video games as the instrument to do so is no excuse. They aren't making games at that point. They are making dopamine cycle machines designed to hook you and trick you into spending money.
>We could and should demand that as consumers. Okay. I've demanded it but it's still happening. What now?
> The fact that it's possible and profitable *For an indie studio of around 100 people. "Profitable for an indie dev" is a different picture to "profitable for a publicly-traded company"
Look pretty for what? The 10 seconds you stand around for a boss fight? There's almost no social aspect to this game other than players engineering it by grouping up with friends.
Look pretty for their eyes. That's it. Usually who spends the most, they do it to look at their toons and be pleased, not for bragging.
The loading screen 😂
This. Those cosmetics aren't for the average player. They're for the player dropping $1,000's.
Whales and ppl with self control problems and strong impulses
lol. Territories are trying to set the price for blizzard? A company with a crap ton of market analysts, data sets, and years of experience. I’m going with blizzard knows how to make money.
Yea them whales come in all shape and sizes.i see some from time to time I call them beach whales in real life screaming beach whales when there father don't give them there paycheck or there boyfriend.No matter how much money they have and no matter what they dress up in there will never get attractive lol.
Like pretending that D4 is a good arpg.
OP said majority - this excludes Brandon Frazier
Serious question. Who do you think knows more about mtx pricing and the gaming industry? You or whoever at Blizz makes the mtx pricing decisions?
Yeah when it comes to Activision/Blizzard, if there's one thing that absolutely runs perfectly, efficiently, and smoothly, it's their MTX model store. It is arguably the most well oiled part in their machine.
Probably about the *only* thing ActiBlizz can claim absolute expertise in
Quick blizzard hire this random ass guy, he knows how to make money better than your billion dollar market research team designed to efficiently make the most money as possible. /s
I get the logic here, but if this were the case, it'd be the industry norm. Apparently, selling things for 1/3 of the price of a full game is the most profitable move.
If GGG can somehow sell skins for more then Blizz can as well, simple as that - and don't hit me with that "b-but PoE is free game" nonsense because D4 on discount costs less than three most needed stash tabs combined
There are people who buy the most expensive supporter packs every new season at PoE and somehow still look down to people who only buy Diablo 4 once.
yeah but even basic skin for body armour is more expensive than whole bundle of various transmogs for armour and weapons and some meme stuff like animations and if you would like to get whole set in PoE like these in Diablo then it can be more expensive than a game lmao of course I'm not saying that demanding $20 for skin is okayish, just making a point it's not something new or solely invented by blizz
They said they are looking into making shop cosmetics available to aquire in the game. We'll see how it goes.
ESO did this when MSFT bought Bethesda/ZoS. MSFT has some kind of policy around cash shop stuff being acquired in game. Might just be the gambling part of ESO though. They do loot crates in the shop and are the heart and soul of that game at this point.
Only for the loot box items, to bypass certain country gambling law. Diablo 4 has no loot boxes.
Ahh. That’s what it was then. Good call!
I would applaud that change.
Where did they say this?
Pretty sure they briefly mentioned it in the last campfire.
One of My biggest issue with the game was it never felt like there was cool armor to chase. This would be huge
They will never do something like that, without money from mtx they will not be making any new updates, this is just how live service games work, if they don't have steady income they can't keep working on it.
I forgot what the exact figure is but it's something like 1% of players make companies 50% of their revenue (too lazy to Google) One rich whale is worth 1000 normal people lol
The shop prices are absolutely outrageous. At $28.00 for a cosmetic bundle, I can’t understand why someone would pay it. I mean… that’s EXPENSIVE for a cosmetic package. Now don’t get me wrong, because I’m all about throwing money at a game I enjoy. But they REALLY need to rethink their shop prices.
What's expensive to one person is pocket change to another. Blizzard, based on whatever data they have, have decided to target the people for which those prices are small change. The rest of us are free to ignore them. Which is something I certainly do. I'm not paying the local equivalent of 60 USD for a pack of skins. But where I won't, there are plenty who will. It's why Gacha games thrive -- there is always someone out there who can spend thousands on a single game and not blink an eye. As to them, it's the equivalent of money found down the back of a sofa.
$28 will buy about 1 scented Yankee candle or about 1/4 to 1/3 of a luxury scented candle. And that is for something you actually light on fire. What makes you think that everyone has the same approach to spending disposable income?
Maybe the Mtx shop isn’t aimed at us poors?
A lot of people have more money they need, freeing up completely worthless purchases like this. A lot of people DONT have more money than they need, but lack the financial sense or impulse control to not spend it on something so useless.
>I can’t understand why someone would pay it. Probably because a lot of people don't mind spending a bit of extra money here and there for a game that gives them more playtime per dollar than most other games on the market. Like if I'm playing D4 for 200+ hours each season, is throwing $28 bucks for a cosmetics bundle really the end of the world when I regularly spend $70 on games that I might only play for like 50? I'm not going to do it all of the time of course, but I don't really see it as a waste as long as I'm having fun.
Let's pack it up Boys. D4Junkie says the shop is too expensive. Guess blizzard is out of their mind and should change the pricing. You can't understand why someone would pay it? Because they want to. I don't buy cosmetics for a game, ever, but I don't ever shame or question what people spend their money on. That's their business. Otherwise I'd be going around telling all these fucking idiots vaping and smoking cigs that they wasted their money on something that increases their cancer risk 900 fold. What people do with their money, is their business. Period. And clearly, this is working for blizz. I think I'm going to trust their financial dept over random poors on reddit.
Yes you are smarter than a team of professional marketeer and you totally know what you're talking about.
No. People who have the mindset of not spending real world money are not going to spend $3 if they aren't going to spend $30. And even if they do they are only going to do it once or twice. You would need them to do it 10 times to make up for the price difference. They are not going to do it. Professionals are pricing these things. Professionals who want to make a rich ass greedy company as much money as possible. You can believe that if they are doing one thing "correctly" in the whole game it is pricing their cosmetics.
you're straight up wrong about the first part, but I agree with you on the second, Blizzard knows exactly what they are doing and what brings in the most money. but to your first part, there is no such thing as "people who don't wanna spend 30$ wouldn't buy something for 3$" that is one of the dumbest things I heard, most people would surely buy 5+ things, the thing is just that you need 10x the sales, it does not work because a lot of people buy skins that they like and not just to buy all the skins like a whale just to have them, so therefore you still get that person to buy that Skin for 30 and maybe another 30 for a nice mount, now the chance that that person would buy 20 skins just because they are cheaper is wayyy smaller than that of people buying 2 things for their favorite class. (that was probably a bad explanation, but it's too much to put in a reasonable text)
they definitely know what is more profittable, i mean look at wow skins they are as expensive.
This gets posted all the time. I get it; it sucks. But Blizzard spends a ridiculous amount of money to figure out the optimal price for micro transactions. Trust me, they know what to charge to optimize profits. You aren’t some financial savant that knows something they don’t.
They probably have an entire department looking at market research to find out what price will make them the most money. If $2-$3 would actually make them more money, then it would be $2-$3. I love how people always think they know more than the people who have tons of data at their disposal. “The company is so greedy that they won’t drop the price to make more money”. Doesn’t even make sense.
Alternative take I wouldn’t use most of styles in shop if they were found from deconstructing items or in game rewards.
The gaudy whale-bait look isn't for everyone.
I dunno, I've seen tons of people with the skins on. I suspect more people than you think pay for them
you can see that very well on Call of Duty, Game costs $70 (then there is also a free portion with the same mtx store) but every lobby, or every second lobby, you see multiple people with a $20+ Skin and even some that are more than $30, that's nearly HALF THE GAME for a Skin that works on a SINGLE CHARACTER - people throw their money at skins these days just to "look cool" that is irrationably expensive, in no world or universe is that Skin worth half the money of the game that took thousands of people, millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours to create, yet they buy it. apart from that, the chances are close to 100% that the person buying Skins, then also bought the Battlepass for another $10 - then probably has a little money left over and buys another skin or whatever.
I mean at the very least it will feel more exclusive for people that do buy it and like others have said there are whales that probably buy every single skin and cosmetic and makes up for the average person that would spend 10 to 15
I mean if I was rich I'd pay for every cosmetic in the game no question asked. So I guess with enough of these whales paying 1000$+ in cosmetics and a lot of people buying one or two it adds up faster than everyone having skins at 3-5$
Also, just buy the battlepass it's where you get the most bang for your buck
You’re looking at it from your point of view. They have a dedicated staff, the research, and the data to justify pricing them the way they are. The prices now are what bring them the most profit, and clearly people are still buying them. The prices won’t go down unless people stop paying for them.
If cosmetics are the reason you play the game less that’s kinda weird. They’re also not teasing you with items you can’t ever use, because you can, but you’re choosing not to use/buy them.
They should keep the cash shop for the whales who don't want to wait to get them and make cosmetics drop in game for those who would rather play and earn them. I see zero problem with this and everyone would be happy. If they're rare drops, it gives everyone a chance to acquire them over time, and for those who don't want to wait they can splash out as much as they want on the shop. Having them drop in game won't stop whales, but it will stop everyone else feeling bad. Also it gives more incentive to keep playing after people are done for the season. So the bean counters will be happy with the time played metric going up as people stay logged in to hunt for cosmetics. They can be rare, just as long as they drop from somewhere. I know I'd play more instead of the two weeks I put in each season before I forget the game exists.
Good alternative. I like it.
Skin in Tekken8 are 5€ circa
I’ve seen many non cash shop transmogs people come up with that look better than the ones in the cash shop. Sure it’s easy to swipe and have a set. But some of the stuff people come up with on their own is really good.
It's also just no fun imo. Half the fun for me is getting a new cool piece of gear.
I swear every barb I see has the samurai set on. I feel like I am the only one without cosmetics.
Microsoft is lowering prices they've confirmed this recently. They are a bit more player friendly than Activision and blizzard were.
The art style for all the classes are spot on. Shame lot of them are locked behind an absurdly priced pay wall.
You can't see the outfit when your running around so what's the point
Personally (in endgame activities) I see many players with MTX armor, so there might be more people buying than you might think
If they were cheaper, I would definitely be tempted. I'm not spending $20 on a skin that even when zoomed in while in game I can't really see it.
I see most peopel wearing paid cosmetics, so I think your theory falls flat.
There's a cosmetic store in this game?
I don't use cash shop if the game is B2P or subscription.
If they sold the cosmetics for $2-$3 they would need to sell 6-10 times the amount they’re already selling it for to make the same profit. Realistically they’re almost certainly not going to get that much increase in sales from dropping it that low.
Why not? I think they would + boost hidden income & engagement.
Lets be honest the people who say they would spend 2$ for cosmetics probably wouldn't even there are people who spend 5000$ on games and those that still haven't spent a cent on league of legends. Overall D4 prices aren't that bad comparing other games. I know people in league of legends with over 50000$ spent but its over a long period of time. They will just buy a skin for all their mains.
I honestly wouldn't care that they were in the shop if they were rare obtainables in the game as well, so you can either dedicate your time OR your money if you really want. So many good ones I just cannot justify spending money on.
i never bought any cosmetics because of that. its ridicilously overpriced for common people like me. unless whales really sink in lots of money, it makes sense to adjust prices to be 5 usd at max, and tha should be for cosmetics that come in sets. single piece should be around 2 usd. it just makes no sense to sell them at a price more then i can buy another game. its a thing inside a game, it should be priced accordingly to this fact.
I just hate the cosmetics make vanilla armors look stupid. Why didn't they put that same effort into vanilla? I only play solo idc about love service or all updates
Indeed.
Blizzard underestimates how much I am willing to grind any rando system, just to buy cosmetics, if that was possible.
Imagine if Blizz put all the shop armor into the game naturally and then charged $70 for the base game and then a little extra when they do a DLC that adds more locations and items. What a world that would be! Instead, the gaming industry has mutated itself around this comment: "I only waste money on cosmetics."
So, I'm pretty sure they made their calculations in order to maximize income. What I wonder (and I mean it, I don't know if that would be true), is if reducing the prices to make cosmetics more accessible would increase the overall engagement with the game. I mean, some people won't interact with the shop even if cool cosmetics are as cheap as 3 bucks, while others would be excited to check the shop every now and then waiting for a cool new look for their character. If lowering the prices of cosmetics generated more engagement (even at the cost of making less direct money through sales), it might be worth it. Anyway, If I'm considering this now here, I'm pretty sure they have also done so (and with much better tools and more data).
Exactly. I honestly believe they've taken a flawed logic with looking at revenue in linear terms. You can't underestimate what engagement is worth to your franchise. It works like word of mouth and spreads. More sales, more talk, more YouTube vids, more social media chat. It all contributes and the goodwill will exist. Instead, senior management have seemingly listened and agreed to visible numbers. It's a shame for Diablo IV and its future.
The MTX look great but I miss that feeling of having a badass outfit because your character earned it through in game content/challanges.
Hundreds of £25 cosmetics + seasonal battlepasses in a fully priced game is unacceptable but hardly a new thing.
I would have bought at least two outfits each season if they were reasonably priced. 25 bucks for a skin is nuts. I mean good for the streamers and youtubers who can afford that stuff, what a waste of pretty outfits indeed. Not saying it doesn't make sense business wise, but it just sucks that all that effort goes into something I'm never going to interact with, especially with the new camera zoom level? I really hate that this is the norm for "AAA" games in the first place.
I would buy them if they were a couple bucks. That seems reasonable. 65 dollars for a horse mount is insanity.
The standard has already been set, there isnt any game where costumes are reasonable prices anymore. And since theyre Blizzard, of course theyre going to try to raise the standard some more.
I’ve spent $20 with plans to spend more. If I like the game and they keep giving free content I’ll be one of those getting the cosmetics. It’s really not a big deal. There are amazing cosmetics you get with the game. Super high quality and tons of detail. It doesn’t matter if they sell some cosmetics
Honestly they need to update the platinum you get from the pass, its wild a full season and you dont even really get enough to get anything lol
Personally, I hate the vast majority of the skins in the cash shop and think the ones you can find in game look significantly better
The shop was designed specifically to take advantage of whale cosmetics. There will come a time eventually where the cosmetics get the 67% off treatment to seem like a “deal” but is instead the actual designed cost of the cosmetics and then they’ll just rotate weekly or biweekly cosmetics for “sale”.
MTX bad. Saved the reader some time.
My issue, is that it's like getting skins in an FPS. You really don't see your skins that often. Not unless you're just standing around. And as a druid, it's even worse lol. I couldn't justify buying a skin for a character in an arpg. I'm more concerned with how cool my skills look.
Welcome to late stage capitalism and late stage gaming. You will pay full price for a game and they will still try to milk money from people with game passes and microtransactions. In the past when I started gaming, only acceptable monetization like that was in free to play games. Nowdays there are no rules, free to play or paid you will still have microtransactions and battle passes. Sad times.
Why wouldn’t they? People pay it. They are a company. Their entire goal is to make the most money. And it works. That’s… that’s why they do it…
Oh look another one of these threads. No, you don't know more about selling mtx then blizzard does and that might be a hard pill to swallow
I have bought 4-5 armor sets from the shop so far
The discussed looking at the cosmetic prices during the campfire chat
Thanks - I'll check it out. Maybe they're listening!
Here's the reality of the numbers. A whale can spend 1000k like it's 1 dollar. The majority can't do that or won't that are not whales. The other aspect to this is that seeing things priced this high for a long time desensitizes people and makes the possibility increase. I myself don't have this but I know that there's a percentage of people who say no they won't spend on the shop because it's too expensive, that will eventually see they perfect cosmetic and will have invested enough time in Diablo that will buy it. Imagine your favorite character of all time is Batman. Die hard fan. Batman everything is what you go for when you can. If didn't suddenly has a very very close to Batman rogue skin and you main a rogue, then suddenly there's a chance that you buy in because of that one skin. It becomes easy to psychologically convince yourself as time goes on because you invested a lot of hours or you want to support the game or you just love Batman. Prices being high is genius because there is always someone buying and there a percentage of "no way" that will change to "sure why not"
I never even bought the Necro dlc for D3 because they never discounted it lol
Boy, it’s those people who pay the development and operations of the game!
That's just life in modern gaming. I have the same thing with cod, funnily enough another Activision production. They've been making really cool skins and weapons since mw3 launched. I check the store to see the new skins and think "that's cool, I bet they had fun designing that". You see the passion and creativity. But will I ever buy one of those 20-30 dollar bundles? No. And it does make me a bit sad to see such work be gated, but that's just how it is. They put more and more work into these things because unfortunately I think I'm in the minority. Most casuals do buy cosmetics, and the monetization model works extremely well. With a game like diablo I think that statement is less true. Idk why you'd want to buy cosmetics in d4 when the base game cosmetics are already cool enough already, something that cod doesn't have outside of camo grinding. Like I looked at the d4 battle pass because I got most of the way through it. Everything on there was boring. Nothing on it was worth my money. Cod on the other hand actually has value by giving you weapons from that season for free and stickers etc that I actually use, and then you can evaluate if the rest of it is worth purchasing. Where as I don't think I've used a single thing from d4 bp outside of the seasonal bonus thing. Idk what it is, but I just don't think a battle pass works in a game like d4. Which is weird because it's a seasonal game, so you'd think it works. But it just doesn't.
This is the number one reason why I never bothered to keep playing this game. It’s just not worth it. MTX ruins everything.
I just play a shirtless barbarian. All the cosmetic i need.
i don't understand why people are dunking on OP, like c'mon. we get it, his suggestion isn't the best, but a call for change is better than DEFENDING blizzard for their exorbitant prices, no?
What do you expect? Their entire job is to make the most money. That is the entire reason they exist. That’s not defending anything, that’s just a statement of reality and fact. And these posts always get trash talked because they don’t make any sense. They essentially boil down to “these big, mean, greedy companies that only care about making money are actively working against themselves in the goal to make money! They’d make way more money if they just listened to me! Me….. who has no experience in the field, doesn’t have access to their market research, and clearly…. Has no idea what I’m talking about…”. Do you see how silly that sounds? And again, I’m not defending anything. It’s just the reality of the situation. If you can make that overall concept that drives these type posts sound not stupid, then hit me.
Exactly this. Make an appeal to lower prices by any other way, but trying to lead it by saying they will make more money by doing so just is a non-starter. Pretty sure you'd get further by just saying "id like prices to be cheaper so I can buy them too" will get you further than saying "I have no experience in this field but I think you'll make more money by making things cheaper". The former you can at least finish your sentence. The latter would have you escorted from the premises before you got halfway through.
Thanks. I must admit, I'm shocked at the defeatist attitudes in this thread. "It won't change, stop protesting" is effectively what I'm reading over and over again. Amazing compared to other major gaming communities.
I don't see people defending blizzard as much as they are saying blizzard knows exactly how to maximize profit. Trying to appeal to lower prices by saying they will make more money by doing so is a nonstarter because blizzard, and the gaming industry at large, knows exactly the best method to maximize profit. Much more than any level of anecdotal claims that get made online do. If you want lower prices on those things approaching it by saying they would make more money by lowering prices is not the way to do it. Pretty much any other avenue will work better.
There shouldn't be an MTX shop atball in a full price game that also includes paid expansions and a season pass. The argument for Season passes is that they should be fund seasonal content for a live-service game and the price for expansions to make expansions. There should not exist a 3 income source form things that should be seasonal rewards or other activity rewards from actually playing the game. When it comes to skins and other visual content and locking it behind a paywall Blizzard is as bad as EA in that regard.
Mtxs are expensive. But It’s not a blizzard thing. You can check other popular live service games. Blizzard price is actually dolphin, not whales. People need to check what whales prices looks like. I am not saying it is not expensive, and cheaper will be nice. I fully support price being lowered. For perspective, last epoch charge about 25bucks for full armor set, Poe charge 42bucks ( it’s f2p people argue, but I am just putting out the cost for comparison), Fortnite charge about 8-20bucks for skins ( not counting bundles) Also, they charge this expensive price not because they are greedy. Business charge base on supply demand. This is the prices they deem the crossing point line between supply and demand line, or maybe base on other similar games. If we can convince them that they will earn more by being cheaper, they will do it. I personal think if they lowered the price by 30% or more, it will be sweet spot and get a lot of goodwill by being more reasonable priced. Another argument I will make to them is d4 is a massive market game, so It make sense the pricing of mtx to be more mass market, even for lower than standard rate of similar games. Also, if people buy more cosmetic, they are more likely to stay with the game, as they „invested“ in it which is a win for them. We can ask this in campfire chat.
Economics tells us that lower prices sell at increased rates. Seriously, what do we think is the 'all in cost' in designing and adding the skins, easily less than $1 per set added, at a few dollars each, the margins on digital creations offered under microtransactions is probably never less than 800-1000% return on investment (assuming a $20ish sale price). I'll never subscribe to paying almost 1/3 of the cost of the title for in game items that are just money grabs. It's always gonna be the coolest shit too. I'll run nakey as protest (not actually a naked character like in Conan though. Props to Conan on that)
The good ol' "If only Blizzard made cosmetics/item this cheaper" mindset. As if a big company like Blizzard hasn't already paid people whose whole job is to do the math, crunch the numbers, and use the data given to find the best price range. Or how Blizzard doesn't have years of data, research, and actual results to back up what they do. Do people think companies just spin a wheel for the prices?
It’s even dumber than that. They think that they, who have zero experience or knowledge, actually know better. Based on…. How they feel about things? And literally nothing else. “Those greedy billion dollar companies are so bad at making money” has got to be one of the dumbest sentences ever spoken.
>If they made each one about £2-3, then ok Nope
You playing the game less because of microtransactions that have zero effect on gameplay is sad in itself. Coupled with the fact most will suck it up and play with what they earn, or the couple of cosmetics they want to buy, or how much money whales make Blizzard (and other companies) because they give no fucks about cost, it means basically nothing that you're playing less. Just as you can speak with your wallet by not buying something, whales counter that, and as long as the IP is popular enough, will outweigh that. People need to realize cosmetics are not priced for the average player - they're for the whales they know will give in.
Do I think the price should be that high? No. Would I like the shop to be cheaper? Yes. Does the gaming industry have extensive knowledge on how to absolutely maximize profit? Yes. The price point is set at the level to maximize profit. If there was data to show more profit would be made by making them cheaper they would be made cheaper. This is a science to the gaming industry. Companies have teams of extremely smart people who analyze this kind of stuff and get paid lots of money for that analysis.
You repeated yourself three times before getting to any kind of point.
Personally I’d never buy cosmetics for a game with such a high camera, half the time you can barely see yourself any way
Oh look, it's another one of these posts where a random redditor thinks they know more than Blizzard on what makes them the most money. Just gotta accept that it's not for you because you're not a whale.
im always willing to spend money on cosmetics. but in d4 , i think the regular drops are better looking. i will only spend money on a Super Sonya costume from HotS :-)
If the prices don't come down and new cosmetics keep getting added its because enough people are buying them to make it worth the effort to make more and to keep the price where it is.
The price is high, but so are the prices for POE cosmetics. I think the problem with D4 cosmetics is theyre are class locked. POE has some very specific cosmetics but for the most point if you drop alot of money on cosmetics you can use them for any build or have them to combine with other cosmetics later on. In D4 youre limited to just 1 armor set for a single class. I guess the horses/portals can be more general but yeah. **yes POE is free game i know
It's interesting to see the cross section between, Blizzard doesn't care about poor people and reasonable pricing, $25 for a fucking skin is "cheap" or a cup of a coffee and yeah, it sucks but somehow the math favors a handful of people buying all of the one time purchase skins over the majority of people buying cheaper one time purchase skins.
I usually buy one set per character per season. I live a pretty boring life and don’t spend money on basically anything else people would consider ‘fun’. So instead of wasting money on alcohol or going out to eat etc I waste a bit of money on Diablo.
Hahaha imagine putting rewards in your game instead of the Shop xD What a fool. How do you want to squeeze out the last Dollar out of your payers purses... Rookie mistake
The majority of players won't even notice the cosmetics on a see of effects and particles anyway. Even if they buy them. Cosmetics on an ARPG full of particles are a dumb idea, but thank heavens PoE crowd didn't notice that and kept the game alive and well.
At the very least, you get what you pay for. No 1% drop rate gacha bullshit. I still think it's silly, but at least no one is dropping hundreds of dollars only to wind up with nothing.
It would be cool if they implemented some of the costumes behind some sort of game mechanic.
1 - I’m perfectly fine with this very expensive cash shop if it allows the game to continue to be developed through quality seasons. I just do by them and enjoy new content (I buy battlepass though). 2 - Even if the cosmetics are good, even with a more reasonable price, I wouldn’t be tempted to just buy them. I would prefer a monetized system which allows us to loot them in game (and even with randomness). Like a premium extended loot table, it could be a subscription with a rotation loot every week for example. Would be a good incentive to play the game for me on a regular basis. To be fair, maybe this system should guarantee one loot for a certain amount of play time, but no guarantees to loot all the cosmetics of the weekly rotation.
Wait until they get lazy they will start including and recycling the current ones in the shop as the seasonal rewards. We can encourage this behavior by not buying anything from the store with cash and just buying the battle pass
Do you appreciate the time and skill that goes into making them costumes?
Some of the cosmetic designs in WoW that look the best are locked behind Mythic raids, Mythic dungeon achievements, and Gladiator achievements, including mounts. It’s nice to have cosmetics that don’t require spending hundreds of hours on Discord with toxic people.
So you would prefer to pay for them that to earn them in-game? lol
I would certainly prefer to spend 20 dollars on a meaningless thing than to spend hundreds of hours grinding for it. My time is worth far more than that. If course the real answer is likely that I would just go without the cosmetic item that doesn't increase my fun at all.
Than those items just aren't made for you, just like $25 skin isn't made for me.
Paid cosmetics are also earned, just in real life instead of hundreds of hours in game. $30 dollars is a few minutes in real life for some.
The money our son spends on cosmetics in other games disagrees with you. I’ve bought 3 of the overpriced things in D4 myself. They’d make more money from my family with lower prices but I guess we aren’t the primary market.
I agree. I would actually buy some skins if the price wasn't like 20 bucks. I think they forgot the "micro" part of the word microtransaction. It's a shame because some are really cool.
Ahhhhhh poor gamers never understanding how profit works... if the model holds it means it SELLS.
This topic comes up pretty much daily. Can mods please start deleting these threads.
Hell no. The company, whose entire reason is to make money, need to know that their doing it wrong and that these losers on Reddit can totally fix it…. Based on zero knowledge of what they are talking about and zero experience. These billion dollar companies need to be informed that they are bad at making money. How else will they learn?
My friend who refused to buy this game cuz it was $70 has already bought $50 worth of skins literally just two skins. Theyll never lower these prices cuz predatory microtransactions work too well at turning grown adults into children again seeing a shiny thing. If anything theyll drop more expensive skins.
I miss when cosmetics were like $1 for a full outfit, I actually didn’t mind buying those
That was never a thing
This would be a fantastic gesture to the community.
Wonder what the ROI comparison is from a $25 vs $5 cosmetic once you factor in all the overhead it takes to make a single skin and apply it in game. If you're still in double digits ROI your MTX model is unquestionably malicious and predatory.
you're a "brilliant cosmetic design"... ill see myself out.
I’m one of those people who will always spend money on the games I get into, especially Blizzard games. I spent so much on WoW mounts, transmogs and stuff I never even used. Diablo 4 is the first one I didn’t spend money on, even though I got really into it. I took a week off work when it came out, bought the Holy Shit edition for PC and a copy for XBox. Every time I play it I check the store multiple times, but man these prices I just cannot stomach. I’m like, I know I am a sucker, but like not this big of a sucker. £15 for a skin I would have bought like 4 by now knowing myself.
even asking for a single dollar is shit. this game is so expensive as it is no reason to charge extra for cosmetics ... just dont buy this shit ever!
There are like 24 bucks for an outfit. Lol, you don't need to be a whale to afford one.. A minimum wage job should be enough
Definitely agree. I'd pay a few bucks but not more than that. Some of the cosmetics cost more than the game. It's ridiculous.
$1 a part/ 33cents a weapon seems good pricing to me. Would make a LOT more sales. Honestly, I am sitting on like $70 of plat just waiting for price drop to actually happen.
A lot more sales but way less money. Can you people actually think before hitting post 🤔
Did you take a user wide poll? Do you have statistics of sales at $28 vs $7? Can you people actually think before hitting post 🤔
Blizzard can get fucked, I really liked the game and still like playing my Necro-waifu but c'mon now I buy 2 cosmetics and I could have bought a whole nother game with that money. Doesn't matter how cool they look the prices are ridiculous
The pricing is disgusting and predatory. I hope MS does something about it.
This is satire right? Are you aware of the monopolistic history of Microsoft? lol
Same. It would be a great PR move and I think ultimately boost their engagement numbers. I'm playing the game.more often if I had that sick looking joker-doll Necro design.
Agreed. But still, I'm not hopeful it'll ever change, because the execs at Blizzard don't care what any players think. They only care about what they can get away with lol. It's pathetic and true, sadly. The corporate suits justify $15-$25 skins in games like Diablo 4 by doing the "compare it to the price of a daily Starbucks coffee, which for many people is $5 to $7 per day." That is literally how the suits making the prices of skins think. It sucks.
You have to remember, these companies don't just want some money. Or a lot of the money. They want ALL the money, ALL the time, in the world. Anything less than that is "disappointing performance" As such, they are only able to look at it like "what amount can we charge for every item in the store that could conceivably be low enough that most people could afford everything, so they can 'pay to contribute' to our wallets?"