Microtransactions and how to monetize the game well

As a primer for this post, a not too shabby video put together by the escapist on microtransactions. It isn't all-encompassing, and don't regard it as truth, but I think it's pretty informative on the issues at hand:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3689-Microtransactions

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This game needs to be monetized at some level, obviously, and since the chosen path for PoE is cosmetics, I think we need to brainstorm and tell the devs what we want to see. I'm thinking there should be three price grades:

Cheap (50 cents-$1 USD)

Moderately Costful (within $1.50 USD and $10 USD)

Luxury ($10+ USD)

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I think a good strategy is to have some items that are really tempting, they're cheap, to hook players into getting used to getting items from the item shop, perhaps even some free (minor) monthly items for veteran players. Spending a dollar here and there will stimulate interest in the shop, and as shown in other games (and the video), much of the barrier of entry to purchasing a good from an item shop is that lack of familiarity with the item shop. You want to stimulate its use even by non-traditional audiences (kids or those without credit cards and such), so having some dirt cheap items of 50 cents or less could really get some people interested in at least browsing the shop.

And please, steer clear of awful pricing ranges. Either use a monetary system that's flat $1 or 50 cents, flat, none of this $1.37 and so on. If the system is to use points, make it 100 points for an item, not 101 or 105. And if you must insist on points, please allow for very small transactions... I really think points make item shops seem like con-schemes and you should just go with a direct dollar purchase of an item, even if that is not as "beautiful" as using a point system.

Let's strive for sales too. Learn from what Steam has done. It's taken the DD market by storm, with its awesome, ridiculous sales. Considering how you're selling virtual goods, I think you can afford to put items at ridiculous prices at peak purchasing times during the year (items being temporarily reduced in price by like 50-75% for only 2-3 days, every 6 months would keep them attractive to buy years round and give you some splurging buyers during christmas and summer).

Finally, try to be fair with other currency. I know this is tough, but 1 euro is not 1 USD, it's not even close. It's really hard, I know, but striving to be as fair as possible would win you some rep with the European players.

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I would strongly consider making cosmetic enhancers permanent. You can enchant an item with a specific cosmetic effect and trade it later, the item retaining its effects. This allows players who don't want to spend money to acquire whatever effects they want, if they're willing to trade for them and search out items already enhanced by other players. Perhaps the item enhancers themselves aren't tradable? Or maybe they are?

The only downside to this idea is that from what I understand about PoE so far, items are pretty transient, so people might be turned off to the idea of purchasing item enhancers for items they may not necessarily want to keep forever. But then again, it would enhance their value for other players, so it would make them good trades, it's not like the money would be entirely wasted when you find something you want to upgrade to... I'm not sure. You /could/ make cosmetic enhancers act like gems and sockets, perhaps you can remove them and apply them to new weapons and armor you find? Or perhaps there's a limited number of times you can do this? In either of those cases, you'd need to bump the cost of item enhancers. Keeping the price low, I think is important for seducing people to spend money, but any of the aformentioned could work.

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I think one good way to look at figuring out what stuff to make for this item shop, is to take an interesting approach I've noticed from following the developers of Dwarf Fortress. What the brothers do when they are designing new features for their game, is they write a story. ie:

Arbok the dwarf walks into a dungeon and finds many zombies! He slays them with his magical sword. He finds the dungeon lord who is a powerful goblin necromancer who summoners more zombies to fight. Arbok defeats the necromancer by making his minions walk into some sunlight, causing them to burn and die rapidly!

Then to analyze the story and ask yourself, what sort of things does the game need to enable that story? Well, it needs zombies, for one. A system of raising the dead. Secondly, it needs dungeons to be generated, and a dungeon lord to be generated. It also needs a necromancer, and the ability to raise the dead given to him. Finally, there needs to be a way for the game to understand where there is and where there is not sunlight, how it should interact with given things, burning them or healing them, et cetera.

To apply this same idea - although I haven't had the priveledge to play PoE - perhaps I begin a character with the intent to play a necromancer. Perhaps you haven't released a good death magic direct magic spell yet? The ability to change the art of fire ball to something more "necromancer-like" either with a new particle effect or particle effect recolor to it - to make it a black fireball, or maybe better yet, make the spell effect into unleashing a tormented spirit? Something akin to the WC3 undead tower attack animation (if you know what I'm talking about). To further the "story" of a necromancer character, perhaps I want to be a male necromancer? Well, perhaps further down in development, you can focus on making alternate gender models/animations for their respective classes, putting them at a premium. You can also help make this story playable by allowing players to change the skins and models of their minions or items, perhaps to pre-existing models, or premium custom-made ones made by your art team?

So basically, imagine some class archetypes or themes, cosmetically, and make items so players can become that thing. Also encourage players to mix and match, but allow players to "roleplay" and define their role in the community. Think of stuff people like themeatically too, and borrow proper elements from them - vikings, pirates, gladiators, ninjas (shudder), You might even want to consider non-human stuff, allowing players to change their character models into monsters... though that would require quite a bit of work, depending on the monster chosen.

So here are my and others suggestions, in a simple list format:


CHEAP
Minor armor/clothing dyes (maybe 2-3 charges for a single dye item)
Minor ability dyes (change your red fire spell into a violet one)
Minor capes or character ornaments, attachments, minion skin changes
Item re-namer?

MID PRICE RANGE:
Particle/aura attacher - Your normal looking sword now has flames, smoke, frost, flies, light, etc. spewing from the hilt. Maybe you can use it on your minions or a piece of armor too. Perhaps you can apply it to a character model, envelop them in shadow or flame.
Minion Models - Your minions now have a different/unique model when summoned
Pets - they've been mentioned before, non-combat pets like ravens, toads, imps, etc.
Model Selector - Change the model of a weapon to a different one? I could see this as problematic in PVP, where you could make one commonly-used staff to look like another, to fool other players, but perhaps not?
Custom sounds - maybe a taunt, or a noise added to weapon hits or spell connects
Banners - Think tabards or banners samurai used to wear on their backs, with a multitude of options for graphics
Storage - I'm unsure what kind of "home base" (a bank?) we get, for storing stuff, but being able to increase its capacity to store things sounds fair enough, though inventory increasing sounds unfair, as it gives players an edge for hoarding items while they grind.

LUXURY:
Big cosmetic changes like animation changes (the way your character walks or swings their weapon) to total model changes (like a male witch? female marauder? Playing as a non-human witch? etc.)
Perhaps a /cosmetic/ mount for your player? Not sure how that would work. Probably not feasible.
Big body modifications... like being able to only have one arm, having lost one in combat? Big scars on the body? Perhaps a blindfold or patch to imply blindness, ie slight model/skin changes that can be added onto existing player models
Name a NPC after you? With admin's making sure it's not a dirty word before approving it.
Random Gift box - Okay, so this is the TF2 player in me, but I know these things are addictive as fuck. It's cruel, but it's worthy to consider them. $10 to get a random assortment of cosmetic items, perhaps a very rare cosmetic item can only be gotten from within. This is a ploy many F2P MMOs employ to get people to spend hundreds... and it's not really fair, it's a bit like price gouging, but having this as a gift item to give to a friend, really wouldn't be a bad approach to marketing this.

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Anyway, just throwing out some ideas, would like to hear other's ideas too. Let's be critical of them too. I'll add good ideas to the list. Tell me what you might want to buy from an item shop in PoE. Especially those who have had the opportunity to play it!

Read all of your post...I'm not a tl:dr kind of guy. I agree with basically everything you have posted, especially the part of how to actually pay for items from the cash shop.

I have played many games where they price items at $1 = £1 and it completely puts me off buying from their cash shop, as a British player, I would be paying 1.6x that of an American for no extra benefit. I think for this to work though, you would have to use points in the cash shop, otherwise prices would be odd, like £1.57 for a cape etc. But if this is going to be done, please sell the cash shop points at a round, easy to understand value, such as $1 = 100 points. I have played games where it costs you $3 for 700 points and it causes the math for expensive items to become difficult. If a player (especially younger players) is confused by how much they will be paying for their items, I feel that it would possibly cause them not to purchase the item.

I am not too sure about the cheap items you listed. Many players don't purchase from cash shops, as they either aren't allowed to or don't have a way to buy things online. Charging $0.50 for an item would have very nearly the same amount of buyers as if it were say $1, I feel. This will be hard to balance I am sure...

Keep up with the good suggestions!

Yeah, I know points is probably how they're going to do it, but TF2 uses straight up cash, and I think $0.5 is fair, though you can argue $1 is the same in essence... it depends on things are marketed. If I want to dye all my armor black... and then I decide to get a whole new set of armor tomorrow, I just wasted like 7 or 8 dollars dying, instead of half of that. I'll be a lot more likely to buy $3.5 for some dye than $7, especially considering how points are set up. And since it's a perishable good, I'll keep coming back for more, or at least, you hope that I will, so the small amount of initial profit lost is overwhelmed by a steady strong profit over time.

And to be fair about conversion rates - they're changing all the time. It would be fair to approximate 1$ USD for at least 1.3 or 1.4 euros, even if the real exchange rate is a little better than that. Realize that companies also have to turn the assets they make into useful cash themselves, so if you pay them in euros, they have to convert that into their own currency to use it in their own country... I think? Maybe not if you're giving it all to a bank to pay off a loan :P but in other cases not.

lol gonna bump

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anubite wrote:

I would strongly consider making cosmetic enhancers permanent. You can enchant an item with a specific cosmetic effect and trade it later, the item retaining its effects. This allows players who don't want to spend money to acquire whatever effects they want, if they're willing to trade for them and search out items already enhanced by other players. Perhaps the item enhancers themselves aren't tradable? Or maybe they are?

I don't think the enhancers should be tradable, but items with neat little visual effects should. And god yes they should be permanent. I probably wouldn't buy them if they wern't.

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anubite wrote:

Random Gift box - Okay, so this is the TF2 player in me, but I know these things are addictive as fuck. It's cruel, but it's worthy to consider them. $10 to get a random assortment of cosmetic items, perhaps a very rare cosmetic item can only be gotten from within. This is a ploy many F2P MMOs employ to get people to spend hundreds... and it's not really fair, it's a bit like price gouging, but having this as a gift item to give to a friend, really wouldn't be a bad approach to marketing this.

I don't think anyone would buy 10 dollar random boxes. Hell, I don't think anyone would buy 5 dollar random boxes. Like you said, they're addicting as fuck. Meaning people are gonna want to buy lots of them. But with a 10 dollar price tag, it seems like more people would just think "10 bucks for something I'm gonna get hooked on? I think I'd rather not even start.". The main reason TF2 crates are so damn successful is because they keys to open them are only $2.50. That and they change the contents often. Maybe endgame bosses can have a chance to drop an "Magically Sealed Lock Box [1]", and the same boss on a harder difficulty will drop an "Magically Sealed Lock Box [2]" with better contents than a [1]. And to open the box you need some sort of rune from the cash shop. And later content patches will have more bosses who drop different lock boxes.

Thanks for the video link. I think it really points out the main problems with monetized free to play games. Hopefully it gets spread around the 'net and more developers think about it. I believe GGG will discuss those ideas, but we shall see when it's released.

I will be satisfied as long as nothing sold in the cash shop can be traded in-game.