Aren't cosmetics a little overpriced?

It's like $40-50 to get a chest + head + boots combo or bundle...

Sometimes even more...

From what I can tell, I can't even "mark" items to get notified of when they go on sale.

:/

And by "sale" I mean, when they go on pricing of what they probably should have started at. (And even then, still really expensive.)

I don't know what do other games charge? You have to have a baseline for comparison which I don't have. Sales are good though Like half off... Full packs are good. Free MTX with point you buy. And totally free MTX is the best like by playing game.

Love my demon wings from breach and sanguine seraf red armors from torment/bloodlines...match perfect and free

Free MTX is the best MTX

PoE's mtxes are grossly overpriced for what you get.

In any game but PoE, I will not pay more than $10-15 for any major cosmetic mtx, period. I'm talking full character armour skin here. Maybe some voice work thrown in. Mere single armour piece or weapon skin? A few bucks, MAYBE if it's REALLY good. Mount skin? Same. There's your baseline.

For example, last night I deliberated over buying a full gear replacement 'outfit' that I can apply to any character in Guild Wars 2 that imo looks far better than anything in PoE in terms of design and quality (seriously, the detail on the fabric blew my mind) -- and it 'only' cost about $8. And I still hesitated for a good half-hour before indulging.

But then you have to consider how they afford to price such high quality mtxes so 'low' -- they also sell at a premium stuff like unlimited gathering tools (in-game they break and cost in-game currency to replace), level boosters (insta-max level for people who want to go straight to the expansions/meta-map events), inventory expansion slots (straight up pay to win by PoE standards), and name rechange (to this day a free service offered by GGG). Hell, you can straight-up buy 'gems' and then convert them to in-game currency, if you want to ruin the game for yourself that way (or bypass months of grind). These are all WELL beyond the pale as far as GGG are concerned, who seem content to flirt with pay for convenience with stash tabs and gacha with the loot boxes. Everything else really is purely cosmetic and thus is priced higher to offset the lack of 'guaranteed' sales for pay-for-convenience or even pay-to-win items. On top of all that, GW2 might be 'free to play' but that's purely a taste -- the full and actual game will cost a good $50. So, again, they can afford to have cheaper mtxes because they have other streams of revenue.

But to me it's not even about the grotesque price of PoE mtxes -- it's about the fact that the game is hell-bent on making them difficult to appreciate. Unlike most MMOs, PoE doesn't have huge town hubs where people can idle and show off their shinies. Unlike most MMOs, PoE is almost constantly a mess of overcooked skill effects, many of which obscure your character. Sure, MMOs can get really cluttered during the action, but it's not always about that.

The entire notion of aesthetic mtxes in a blazingly-fast ARPG is kind of silly, and I think it only ever really gained traction with PoE because of the business model it was supporting.

And this whole 'free mtx' thing is a fallacy -- you're still paying for it. Sure, the GGGold feels free or like a perk, but then you need to consider what you're getting otherwise: a few forum titles, a few other mtxes, maybe a bit of merch if you're lucky. There's only one thing free to PoE and that's the game itself, which is calibrated perfectly to encourage, very strongly, the purchase of, at the very least, a handful of stash tabs. And that's a pretty fair 'entry price' to the real game imo. It's a price-tag by proxy.

But the aesthetic mtxes? Good lord. Waste of money in and of themselves. The best value mtx has always been and likely always will be the skin transfer, because the paid mtxes rarely fit the flavour the game as apty as in-game skins and designs, which to some degree need to conform to the 'Wraeclast' vision. If a person is wearing, say, Kaom's Heart, I expect the npcs to be able to see it. Mtxes, on the other hand, I always read as purely for the players' benefit, and not something npcs could perceive. A filter, so to speak.

Wraeclastian design at its best doesn't need that filter at all.

Which is all to say, I honestly believe unless you want to support GGG beyond the purchase price value-wise, most of PoE's mtxes are ridiculously poor value, especially the 'costume' overlays.

Id say sale price is more of the actual price. Ive bought some things not on sale but for the most part i buy things on sale. Its also a free game so not comparable in that sense. For example COD, you have to purchase the base game, and the bundles you buy are like $25-30 as well and you cant even visually see them 99% of the time, like your own character model unless you do an execute.

I think theyre very fairly priced considering how much better they are now than before, on top of that when POE 2 comes out, all that is going to be updated and cross platformed and usable into POE 2. For me thats a huge selling point. How many other games have you spent money on for MTX and when that games dead because a newer one comes out, you "lose" it all ? Its all temporary in those cases especially since they never have plans to let you keep and use them in other games.

Ive never seen any game do something like that before where they transfer over previous games cosmetic items into a new game and engine.

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

I don't know what do other games charge? You have to have a baseline for comparison which I don't have. Sales are good though Like half off... Full packs are good. Free MTX with point you buy. And totally free MTX is the best like by playing game.

Love my demon wings from breach and sanguine seraf red armors from torment/bloodlines...match perfect and free

Free MTX is the best MTX

Other games charge the same or more and in a lot of cases you cant even visually see when you purchased while playing. For example Apex, COD. APEX is insanely expensive, a weapon charm alone is $5-7 and skins usually run $20 for one skin. Entire collection events are usually $150+. Call of Duty is similar, absolutely obscene amount of cosmetics but outside of the gun skins theres not much to see unless you execute someone, their bundles are generally $20-30 as well.

A long time ago in WoW when they came out with the first buyable mounts and such those were i think the golden dragon during mists of pandaria and if i remember right it was $20-25 at the time. I think they do cosmetics besides mounts and such too but im unsure.

This is how they make money. They don't charge a subscription. It's completely optional.