So, many of us complain about the monetization of this game and how the prices of cosmetics are outrageous. I’m one of those people who refuses to buy anything with those absurd prices.
Now, they came out with a new Symmetra skin that I just LOVE (Art Deco). For just… 1900 coins, aka 19€.
When I first saw it, I said: there is now way I can buy this skin for that price.
Now my idea is: maybe I can wait and Blizzard decides to lower the price of the skin in the future? It makes sense to me that, due to all the criticism they are receiving, they could decide to lower those prices sooner or later.
At the same time I think: if that happens, what will be the reaction of those same people who actually spent 19€ for the very same skin?
I’m afraid that if Blizzard decides to change the prices, the skins that were sold for a higher price could just be removed, in order not to make the people who bought them angry?
I remember seeing somewhere where they said monetization would change with season 2. Doubt its a big change. Its probably only battle pass related. I hope they give coins.
When I submit a bid and do a job for X number of dollars reliably… then I’m keeping that price. I don’t lower it because I feel cute today and wanted to make less.
I would say the prices aren’t that bad it’s just skin quality is not up to par often.
and being so stingy with premium (or anything) credits just makes it bad.
I have no clue for certain, my bets are no outside of tweaking the bp, but maybe when microsoft buys them they’ll change it. I hope so, at least, as I would have bought the Hanzo and Kiriko skins if they weren’t 20$ each.
I’m one of the people willing to buy a skin on occasion. I bought witch Kiriko because I loved it WAY too much to pass it up for the character I play the most right now, and if Will-O’-Wisp Tracer would every show up in the damn shop then I’d be all over that one too… Curse you Blizzard for not letting us just buy things from the Heroes tab like we used to!
Personally, I wouldn’t be too angry if they lowered the price of skins after I’ve spent money. While yes, it would suck that I spent more on witch Kiriko, it was still my decision to do so and lowered prices would be only a good thing for all of us (including me) moving forward.
I would actually hate it if they forced total refunds on us too. If the Tracer skin I’ve been wanting to get for a while now finally shows up in the shop after I’ve been pining after it, and I buy it, and a week later they took it away but refunded my money… I’d be really angry that I waited so long for it only to immediately lose it, unless they fixed the shop so I could immediately go buy it again at a discounted price.
A better way would be a refund in the currency difference while letting us keep the purchases. But I don’t think they’ll do anything of the sort.
Keep in mind that they based these prices on feedback from players. They sent out surveys asking players what they felt was a reasonable price for skins in a shop, and the values were random for each survey so that they got a wide range of data about what prices would be acceptable or not.
Clearly the acceptable price, based on Overwatch player feedback, was $20 for a legendary skin.
For a F2P game, I think that’s fine personally. You’re free to disagree of course, at the end of the day it’s your money and if you don’t think a skin is worth the price, you’re free to vote with your wallet. But as someone who understands that game dev is expensive and that Overwatch 2 needs to be profitable if development wants to continue and not get shuttered, I don’t begrudge Blizzard charging $20 for a single legendary skin.
It was randomly sent out to players via email during the beta tests. I was one of the people who participated. There was a bit of drama surrounding it because despite the fact that you’re not supposed to share the survey around, someone did after they noticed one of the questions asked if they’d spend over $40 on a skin.
Blizzard had to come out and address the survey saying that the numbers for each survey were randomly generated so they had a wide range of answers and price points to look at. My survey asked if I’d be okay with spending $30, which I said no to, because I think $30 is excessive.
They’ll only consider it if player numbers and sales numbers drop enough.
As it stands, it looks like the days of fairly priced cosmetics (£8 a go for a OWL legendary)+random cosmetic progression (lootbox) are well and truly gone.
Pretty shocking.
And the fact that they could have based their prices on this limited survey is shocking too.
I really wonder how many surveys were sent and how accurately people answered (I’m sure some people will have just clicked on random answers or even troll saying “yes” to “would you buy a skin for $60?”).
Normally they try to get a good sample size, so… I’d probably say around 5000 surveys went out or so. That gives them a good pool of data to look at and see what’s reasonable, and by the look of it, clearly the settled price point for legendary skins was $20.
I expect once S1 ends and S2 starts, the mythic genji skin will be available for purchase, and I expect that will probably be $30.
Well, I work in marketing, I know that surveys are ok to get a general idea and work on some specific occasions. But there can be quite a huge gap between what people say in a survey and what people actually do.
Also consider that people were not seeing the item in the survey, what do you consider “mythic” or “legendary”? It’s like asking if you would buy a “fancy car” for $50k without seeing the “fancy car”.
I think they may have taken this survey a bit too seriously and they will have to redetermine their selling prices sooner or later.
I think one day they might. If they think it will make them more money. But who can say if they ever will or if those skins will be offered again. I’m not going to mislead you but I did decide personally to wait on Witch Kiriko. Maybe a year from now I’ll have saved up the free credits at the very least, lol.
I don’t expect to get everything for free but I just started playing Fortnite again and dropped some money immediately because I liked some skins and I felt they were fairly priced. Overwatch asked us to pay 26 dollars for a nice skin, screw that. I would like to be able to spend money with them and feel good about it but at these prices I can’t, personally. I feel like they don’t respect their customers with these prices, especially when there’s places across the street doing it better.
I suppose that’s going to entirely depend on whether or not stuff sells.
If it doesn’t sell, they may reduce prices, but if it does, if people buy skins, then there’s no incentive for them to change prices. The free market decides, as the saying goes.
Yes, absolutely, I’m in favor of free market.
I hope they also consider the discontent of part of their player base that comes from OW1 and not just care about new players coming from Fortnite.
Sometimes the discontent of their most loyal customers makes a company change his strategies too, not only the free market.