You’re leaving out the part where they went from a predatory structure to one that is almost perfect with no downsides. The pricing wasn’t the real problem.
I might be repeating myself here, but I think people are missing this point.
I don’t think everybody had the same problems with it though.
It doesn’t change the fact that the predatory nature was a far bigger problem than the prices or how that change was far bigger. I don’t think this is subjective, though some people may not care about it.
If they lowered the prices by 75%, but kept the rest the same, it would still have been a terrible system, but on a much smaller scale.
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I personally think that people continuing to call them “predatory” with no actual proof that they were actually being predatory is a problem. Why does it mean that someone was being “predatory” just because they priced their product way too high, then lowered it after backlash? Can’t it be possible that they really did actually listen to their community and realized their mistake and that their original prices wasn’t intended to be predatory, nor that their response was planned ahead of time?
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I’m not talking about prices of anything at all.
Maybe not, but many on here have already spoken about both the prices and the response as being predatory. You used the term predatory so I’m curious how you believe they were being predatory.
snippet from my reply here: Cosmetic Shop Beta | Coming in Rising Flames - #123 by xolak
- Conversation rates are not simple, so you have no idea how much cosmetics actually cost at a glance, which gives a huge disconnect from real money and encouraging further spending
- You can only buy cosmetic points at specific values, so you will always have leftover if you buy something, encouraging the player to spend more money
- You get better value for spending more, so you’re strongly encouraged to always make bigger purchases
Basically, using psychology to trick consumers into spending more money, especially profitable with people vulnerable to this kind of thing.
Do some research if you need any further clarification; I’m sure it’s simple to find a lot on the topic. It’s, at least partly, why the mobile market is so profitable.
Yeah, I see that but every game I’ve ever played that had cosmetics had a similar pricing scheme and I’ve always had a problem with that. Just because they are following what appears to be industry standards doesn’t make them predatory by nature.
I hope you’re not misunderstanding me. I’m not saying EHG is or was being predatory. From me, and in general, that’s how the previously proposed shop structure is described.
I actually like the new proposed shop. All of it. I like EHG and I think they did right by us.
I’ve heard the arguments about people saying EHG had all this planned, and they’re using the prices as a basis for their argument. Anchoring? First time I’ve heard the term this way…
The bigger change was the structure, not the pricing. And in their argument, we are happy and praising them because the new thing is a “lesser evil” or something.
The new structure is not that. It is perfect and I see no flaws. Nothing that makes it predatory at all. And that’s why I think that argument is flawed.
Ok, yeah I was misunderstanding you. When you said “It doesn’t change the fact that the predatory nature was a far bigger problem than the prices or how that change was far bigger.” I thought you were saying that they were being predatory.
My apologies.
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Wrong. This is the same argument as: “If everyone else is jumping off a cliff, are you also going to jump off the cliff?”
Just because a practice is the industry standard doesn’t make it moral.
Deliberately pricing things in nonsense coins and then making sure that you will always have leftover nonsense coins no matter what you purchase is deliberately taking advantage of people; especially those people with poor impulse control or are math challenged.
Josh Strife Hayes did a fantastic breakdown of these types of monetization schemes:
And here’s one on Diablo Immortal:
And this is what, we as players and consumers and fans are afraid of.
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I highly disagree, it “may” be that they simply didn’t think it through or do the research they should have. Being predatory implies and intentional desire to prey on their target. Show me the proof that they intended to be predatory.
Well normaly I come up with such stuff 
. I don’t think EHG had any ill thoughts on the pricing of their stuff and just went for normal prices. Look at other hack and slays where you pay 25€ for a costume ^^. The prices EHG startet out with have been expensive and the currency breakpoints at what you buy them were equaly bad as in other games.
They most likely were happy when they did it while they used numbers compareable to other games. Then again EHG was the first company to act on an imidiate shitstorm very fast and it might look fishy to some, then again I think they got their eyes opened after a rough awakening. They agreed to the feedback that was given to them unisono and acted fast.
Normaly this is how I like it but then again if the MTX goes online and the prices still suck more then a senile vampire I’ll revisit the MTX store topic. So fat I think EHG has good intentions.
I agree with this statement except that converting money into some “nonsense coins” has a lot of benefits and reasons
Its really just about not trying to make this currency deceptive or confusing (with abstract conversion ratios etc.)
Just to name a few advantages:
- Only the Storefront, where you buy the coins needs to deal with regional pricings and real world currency. In-Game Shop can totally ignore this.
- The devs can do giveaway or gifts way more easily
- The devs can award players with this currency
- The devs can do bundles or offers more easily, which is harder if you buy items directly
- Less individual real money transactions
There are obviously also some downsides and a lot more things to consider (including some legal reasons as well).
But my main point here was to just say, that its not “nonsense”
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Lol.
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Twitch shows streams with Last Epoch in it even if you’ve played another game during that stream, too. You think you’d know how that works since you stream on the platform. Go to Past Broadcasts and type Last Epoch into the search engine. So long as during that particular stream you set your game to LE, it would show up, even if you also played MTG during it.
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I never said anything against Magic, I simply stated a fact that it’s like the most expensive game to really get into. You going on about how it’s the most complex and high-skill game according to “Insert college name here” just sounds like you’re insecure and trying to show off. lmao
top 0.00001 percentile of players in MTGA, which just so happens to be the most complex game in the world according to Cambridge University.
That just sounds like a copypasta, it’s so funny. Who are you trying to impress here?
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Appeal to Ignorance
Argumentum ad ignorantiam, also sometimes referred to as an “argument from ignorance,” occurs when a speaker presents an argument as fact simply because there is no readily available evidence to prove the contrary. This fallacy is based on a false dichotomy which posits that what we don’t know must not be true. This strategy incorrectly assumes that a lack of sufficient evidence is concrete proof that something can’t be true, a position which precludes the possibility that things may be unknown or even unknowable.
The fact that you cannot spend all your nonsense coins no matter what real-world currency amount you spend nor what different items you purchase in any quantity means you will always have nonsense coins left over. This practice is anti-consumer in that the consumer will always purchase a digital good that has no value because it cannot be spent. This mathematical formula is intentional in its very design and ergo is predatory.
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Cambridge isn’t a college, it is a university (one of the best in the world, just don’t tell anyone from Oxford that). Though I’d be surprised if there were enough MTG players for there to be a “top 0.00001 percentile”.
I 100% agree that using an in-game currency is practically a necessity in the modern age for a variety of reasons, including the ones you’ve mentioned.
It is the math behind what you spend (in real-world currency) versus what you are able to spend (in nonsense coins) that is predatory, not the coin in and of itself.
Also, I like the term nonsense coins to describe MTX currency. Sue me. XD
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Brain fart, haha.
This quote I could usually empathize on its own. But when you choose to mention buying heavily into marvel snap. And that game basically gives you one alt art card with a bunch of useless credit and boosters for $100, I have no more sympathy.
I would value what you get out of $35 in this game over whatever you spent $600 on in Snap. This is coming from a person who have also spent the same ballpark in Snap and thousands more in hearthstone. So digital card games (and spending on them) is not foreign to me.
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