This monetization survey... A bluff?

General Discussion
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unless we have that marketing and semantic “genius” of Diablo Immortal director Wyatt Cheng (for those who don’t know, it’s mr “don’t you have a cell phone?” at blizzcon 2018) within the OW team … to me this monetization survey seems like a strange market bluff to make final prices look better than the pessimism that is being created now. I mean, isn’t it extremely obvious that you’d rather spend so much money on a new game than just a skin?

do you know what I’m starting to think? that it is a bluff to preview an intentionally exaggerated price that they never really thought of proposing and then put the real price thought up from the beginning to the dayone. result: make us say “well, at least it is not the price they had considered in the survey”. now I don’t know how much but let’s think seriously about this hypothesis. It is … just silly that they are asking questions about prices and subjects so specific when it is absolutely no mystery how much each single element is worth in game and in practical terms. :thinking::thinking::thinking::thinking::thinking::thinking:

obviously it’s just a guess but … it’s no mystery that Blizzard has always taken credit for saying “we listened to our community” after having always denied a certain thing (see WoW Classic, see deathmatch in OW), so maybe they are pretending to have such a trivial doubt and then have the benefit of “it could have been worse, if you think about it”.

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I think it’s a “we want to charge these prices and want to see how bad the community is going to react”…

Here is my response:

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It wouldn’t surprise me.

As far as I’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like a very large sample of players got the survey and one would think they’d want to cast a wider net if they hoped for any meaningful data.

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Quite possible they’re flashing high numbers so whatever we end up with looks more reasonable. The added bonus is that it’ll look like they engaged with and listened to their players.

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i mean tis modern day blizzard…they only care about $$$ not the quality of their games nor the playerbase.

once they have ur $ they give to fricks.

another few yrs and they’ll be full blown EA.

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Depends if they give the %s, or just a flat number.

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It’s all haggling as far as I see it.

They start high, then adjust from there

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it’s multi-pronged.

put feelers out and gauge stuff like upper bound of what you can/can’t get away with, then jbait the worst pessimism and deliver ‘better’ than what you spoofed in the survey.

i think they’re scrambling for price-points and sales predictions atm. it’s an MBA nightmare after how bad the OW2 beta looked. Team4 is getting deleted not long after launch. MSFT will clean house. We’ll maybe see a DLC/xpack in 2024-25 to cashgrab the chronic diehards. My contacts at Riot have already received several CVs from people looking to jetison.

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This is actually a good way to look at this and is a tactic often used in contract negotiations. Cooperate will throw in ridiculous requests making the real changes look “reasonable”. Unions will balk and retaliate against the unreasonable changes and typically accept the more “appealing” ones which is what cooperate wanted all along.

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Personally, I’d rather just buy something for money at it’s advertised price than to try to get it in randomized boxes.

That said, I won’t be buying. Blizzard is out to lunch with their prices as far as I’m concerned.

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Well, yes, Blizzard is indeed a corporation and acts as all corporations do. Welcome to capitalism

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I thought it might be a strategy to lower the prices to make the players think “oh they listened. Great. I will buy 5”.

And after some months we will approach these prices and the same players will think “hmmm… A Mercy skin for 30. I have all of the other ones so far. My collection would be incomplete…”.

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The values in the survey are definitely inflated so blizzard can see if people are willing to spent more than the already somewhat established prices.
At the time of the release the prices will probably be lowered to appear cheaper than what was “planned” and people will probably be gladly spending 30 bucks on a mythic skin thinking that it may have cost 45.

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It’s a survey to get data… I don’t know why people are losing their minds over it. It’s not weird to have extreme scenarios in stuff like that.

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Is it really? I am pretty sure they already know the answer of these questions for majority of the people considering how stuff has been priced in the past.

“We are selling this skin for 5 bucks but we ask you if you will pay 10 for it”

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Survey: tell them they’ll pay $50 for a skin so that they finally consider $25 a good deal.

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It sounds pretty fun considering first survey offered mythic skins for 30$

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The survey is literally just market research. It’s not an announcement of prices, it’s an attempt to find out how the market values the items they’re intending to sell. The survey included very low price values (Mythic skins included in package with the total cost of all items being $15, and Mythic skins being valued solely at $40+ dollars being just two examples).

It means literally nothing except that prices for the standalone items haven’t been finalised yet. We know that a Battle Pass will cost 1000 currency and it’s a reasonable assumption that a good deal of content can be unlocked while completing a Battle Pass.

There is actual hysteria happening on this forum today. People need to calm the hell down.

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That is what companies want you to think.

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If the OWL skins cost about 200 tokens, that’s about $10 for those skins, and they are usually some of the coolest legendary skins around. So imo, just based off of that, the mythic skins should be no more than $15. Or they should actually be the final thing you unlock in the battle passes