I understand what you did Daybreak, but your advertising blows

I totally get the reasons behind all the price changes (changes meaning increases across the board).
You inherited a F2P game and wanted to strongarm players to spend some dough, because who seriously wants to grind out 1,000 cents for the TR TMG-50?
I sure don't.

A business has to make money. I get that.
Unfortunately there are two gaping holes in your strategy:

1. You advertised this patch to include "mostly" lowered prices on all items, with "a few" going up.
You failed to specify certs vs station cash...I mean DBG coins or whatever you call it.
No infantry weapon cert costs went down at all.
In fact every cost went UP.
Poor representation of a "rebalance" of the depot.

In reality you slightly lowered some depot DBG coin costs by a dollar here and 2 dollars there.
Nothing drastic or earth shattering, and undeserving of the hype you pumped into this patch towards all the hopeful SOE veteran refugees that this game would turn a new corner.

A corner sure was turned...into a worse neighbourhood.

2. Just like SOE and Mechwarrior Online thought, Daybreak thinks that high ticket items will rake in more sales.
In reality pricing camo at a max of $2 instead of $5 (as an example) would create a ton more impulse buys and ultimately generate more overall sales.
Pricing guns at $5 or less instead of $10 would create more interest in bypassing the cert grind.

With current prices, it's more likely that new players will burn through their initial free certs, play for a bit, and quit because they don't want to bother grinding out 700-1000 certs just for one gun, and they sure don't want to pay 2/3 of a monthly sub cost for one in game item.
I know I don't.

You guys are greedy. You want to make a profit but you are going about it all wrong.
I'm sure you have market analysists on your payroll and they told you this model was a good idea...but it's not.

I won't spend any cash on any weapons. I would rather grind out free certs and play for free then pay exorbitant fees for a single item.
Why do you think games like candy crush are so successful? Do you see them charging $10 a pop for a power up? Their popular sales are all $5 or less.

By all means though, continue down this path you're on. I'm sure it won't get you the success you were hoping for on the end.

The change are in preparation for the ps4 harvest I reckon.

If that's true then they are throwing all their customers under the bus, not just the PC users.

I love the internet, it is where people pretend they know better than people with several years of education and experience, and they have far more data and knowledge to draw their conclusions upon.

But internet user #2161555185055 knows better DBG! He or she, spent a whole five minutes thinking this one through, and that person should actually be employed, regardless of their complete void of any actual knowledge or experience on the topic

Console players don't know any better so they won't care.

Didn't they say most of their income is from selling attachments?

Because developers are always right? Everything they do is for a perfectly legitimate reason and is ultimately better for the community?

Just because they have access to data and experience doesn't mean they know what the hell they're doing.

Right.
And you know better professor?

Better for the community, no. Better for the company, for the most part.

And internet users have neither, yet always seem to know better.

No, I like to keep my Dunning-Kruger to a minimum.

I

Did you happen to think that maybe some of us internet folk actually have business marketing and gaming experience/ education and know how to apply that to an f2p game's business model? Did you consider that weve actually played the game and reckognize how rediculous these price hikes are on the consumer end of things when you consider it already took a considerable amount of time to unlock these weapons prior to the update?

hate to tell ya, but we all were once new players who started off WITHOUT free certs, DBC costs were TWICE as high, and yet here we are. i fail to see your point on calling them greedy for raising cert prices. not only that, the cert prices arent even raised that high, i mean hell the highest youll end up spending is still only 1000 certs

Well you failed at more then that, because I never applied greed to cert prices.
I was very specific.

yeah, higher cert costs mean less free players stick around (whats the point in playing if they can't unlock anything?)
less people to fight makes those of us who are subbed get bored, we unsub and move to a different game.

ironically the change they made out of greed ends up losing them a lot of money.

Well, I'd expect to see some actual backup of arguments, and not just gut feeling and personal biases. You know, some actual evidence that it is a bad move they are doing for themselves and us.

This harvest is done pretty much and the soil has clearly been overused.

The fresh harvest will begin on console. The fruits grown there will have never been seen before and so they will sell well.

The soil has gone salty here and does not yield much.

Unfortunately, people who play 100% free are irrelevant.

These changes will tempt paying players more and those are the only reason the game even exists and so the only relevant persons.

my point was that yes, while you're right that they shouldn't cater to freebies, this game is all about the player base, the entire game relies on having a high population (so you have people to kill, there is no pve)
you can compare the freebie players to AI enemies in other MMOs, they populate the world and give the paying player something to kill, remove the NPCs and the player will get bored and unsubscribe.

making weapons harder to get for free players WILL scare off a lot of them and chip away at the player base.

This is a very important point: PS2 new owners (Columbus Nova) were not the ones to profit off all the old transactions. Their profit time is now. And so they need to generate new sales now in order to make their money.

I worked at Sigil (sister company to SOE) as a designer for a year and I know people at DBG/SOE. I also have a degree in econ/accounting and worked 10 years for a stock picking company ("Global Value Portfolio Mangement Company"). YES, some people here will know much better than people *in charge* at DBG. I bet some people at DBG will know better than people *in charge* at DBG (it is not a democracy).

"Several years of education and experience" and tons of "data and knowledge" *can* be great... if they are on point and they are used. But the Game Dev industry isn't as sophisticated in process and broad in skills and vision as you think.

The Game Dev business in general is largely derivative (of other Game Dev stuff, not of actual companies outside their radar) and lacking in vision or broader competence. And this industry is still in its infancy in F2P, so many haven't even ironed out the kinks purely in terms of basic tried and working systems for people to copy.

Even lots of the "in charge" people I worked at in the stock picking company were likewise narrow minded and derivative. But that industry has the benefit of having been around a long time, and to have a lot of very core and glacially changing business models (for most shops).

At Sigil, they had all kinds of data. But the AP given the task was over his head (I was the only person in the Design department with Econ experience, and a senior AP didn't like me so ignored me). And when he did hand it out (I helped him with Excel) to people (along with feedback from players), it was ignored by most Designers. I made a spreadsheet that showed how power level + ability to use items above your level + tradeability on crafted item broke adventure items by making them useless (and any reason to go into dungeons for higher level adventure items), but I was likewise ignored. I had lunch with a key adventure person and lobbied to have (and incorporate) a solo player option in the game and why/how, but was told no, he wanted a team-only game.

Most people:
1) know most the people who are in fields they know about are poor beyond core functionality.
2) think that this is somehow different in fields they don't know about.

It's the same general problems across all fields: incompetence, greed, laziness, ego, personal agenda, ignorance, bureaucracy, budget, bad/no planning, no double checking, risk management, etc. And they invariably settle in as being fairly rampant across all fields.

"Revenue Model"

Most companies approach a Revenue Model like an Ork. Assign a clever Gretchin to cobble one together from bits from some other company that seems smart. Then try to milk it until it blows up. They never actually look at the full eco-system of it, get to understand it and see how it makes sense, and see where it's headed. And make and maintain a plan and decisions accordingly.

The new gun pricing is an attempt to get more $ from a mature playerbase that isn't spending $. But it is doing it (so far) in a poor way for the PC: it won't affect the mature playerbase much, it will hurt keeping new players. (NOTE: I won't speak to the impact of these changes on the PS4 version, cause I haven't done the research or thought it through)

The mature playerbase (1) already has most the goods (aka things you buy) it needs (in the current game), and (2) can make huge Cert income to get the things they need piecemeal without paying actual $. Just bumping prices for everyone will provide somewhat of a "gold sink" for Certs, but the current number of quality guns is low and most mature players have the ones they want/need.

The new players will hit a wall. Because (1) they can't leisurely acquire things piecemeal because they need lots of stuff up front to compete well, and (2) they are now faced with a more expensive wall to acquire things. PS2 New Player experience was already bad though, so this is just shooting a dead horse.

Now, what they could do (and make a difference), would be to hire a new Balance Designer (cause the current one isn't good at this next bit) and change the stats on underused Weapons/Vehicles/Attachments/Abilities/Loadouts so that all Classes/Weapons/Vehicles/Loadouts/etc. have a use. DBG makes their $ by making more of their items worth buying, so that all players are now incentivized to make more purchases.

The big $ is made when players need to acquire a lot of stuff at once. Usually this happens when players either start playing a new Vehicle/Class or they start an additional character. They need to fill out a lot of Loadouts at once, and don't have the leisure to just pick them up piecemeal through trickle Cert gain/grinding or during sales.

The games Revenue Model would be that the game funds New Players with starting Certs to be able to fun 75% of 1 niche area: 1 Class or 1 Vehicle. Then players would have to pay or grind to fund the opening of other niche areas, OR to broaden the versatility of their 1 niche area.

(many) Players are happy because their game becomes more diverse in terms of each Weapon now having an actual value/role. DBG is happy because they make $. New players are happy because they can buy into at least 1 niche and compete.

Another key area that DBG needs to balance out for this Revenue Model to work is Standard Game vs. Server Smash Game. All the Classes/Vehicles/Loadouts/etc. need to have a use in BOTH Standard and Server Smash games. If you just balance for 1 and not the other, it will not work, because it leaves a hole in the model for players to pursue either Standard or Server Smash tactics to avoid having to diversify in order to compete. If Server Smash remains Fast Deploy Infantry Spam, then players can use that method in the regular game to break the model. It Standard Game remains Tank Zerg + HA to grind, then players can use that break the model.

This farm has sailed though.

The console is the new harvest.