Suggestion for the Micro Transactions

What I do like about how League of Legends and D&D online do it is they give you a point system with which you work long and hard to get enough points to earn new things. Of course the process is very long and tedious so it pushes people into just buying points to get the extras instead. I'm not talking about cards, but maybe for new decks booster packs or for the shop where you can by single individual cards.

But maybe have certain things that you can only by with money like with Lol, how you can by rune pages, and character skins with money only.

 

My main thought on in-game purchases is . . . please, for the sake of any self-respect you have as game designers, never ruin the play balance to make money.

Spending money, just like spending effort, should bring a reward. But there's more than one type of reward. In psychology, we call it "positive reinforcement" when effort brings forth something new and enjoyable, like a snazzy new card or enhanced visuals. Too many designers instead use negative reinforcement: deliberately making a bad and boring play experience, then telling you that you can take away the boredom by spending money. Fork over some cash to speed up loot collection? Okay, fine . . . so long as loot collection is never unfairly slow in the first place.

You've already suggested you would stay on the side of the light. Please remain there.

 

I've never yet forked over cash to make a bad game experience good. I simply don't play anymore.

However, I'm happy to spend points on Lord of the Rings Online as that makes a good experience better. Plus I'm a bit of a costume junkie, truth be told.

 

Chalk me up for no bundled point system. I can tell you, I would have purchased many more Arcade games on the xbox 360 if it I didn't have to pay for more points than what I want to use. Although, I think they may have changed that (making 2 bundles equal a typical game with 0 leftovers)? Let me just PayPal you that $10 for the new Campaign, not $12.99 for 1350 (ooh 50 bonus!) points

Station Cash for EQ2 is the same way, as far as bundles. There are opportunities to get a lot of very similar items in game without paying, but if you want to pay a little, you can have something just a bit different. Of course you won't have to do the work to get it... then again you did just quest at work for 8 hours It would be swell if this was similar... maybe we could pay a couple bucks to have some different board skins, but you could also work for some other ones that you can't buy via in game somehow. Maybe you could unlock a bloodied table after killing 1000 goblins, or you could buy a table that looks like a massacre just happened on it

 

I am vouching for direct pay for scenario's etc.
Like Surgeonfish said , I don't want to pay for an intermediate point system and then cash in the points for the products.

But then again , you can use it to trade with other people.

 

I'm ambivalent to the idea of points bundles - I use them in LotRO and it doesn't irk me. I do use them in combination with in-game points earning and sales, so I maximise their value. Companies do the "have 50 points left over" as a psychological tug on the wallet and therefore increase sales / profits.

Turbine have tripled their earnings on D&D Online and LotRO after adopting a 'free to play' model which uses in-game and purchased points, for example.

 

There were too many things that weren't there in LotRO after they went f2p, that my wife and I got used to. We tried it for a little while, but after hitting blocks in certain aspects of the game, we just wanted to either sub or not play - just as before Same with DDO. I do know that their model works, as my sister-in-law ended up paying more than if she would have just kept and active sub for a year. Now that's the extreme, but it makes sense how a little bit here and there can add up fairly fast and probably more than 14.99 or 9.99 a month.

 

Id be happy to pay a few dollars for extra dungeon crawls (opportunity to get a rare card) etc. Hopefully not guranteed, but a harder map to beat for a chance at something worthwhile.
Not much of a fan of the cosmetic items.

 

The thing I like about the LotRO f2p model is that I don't want to pay a regular subscription, but when I come into a bit of spare cash, I can spend it or 'bank it' in-game.

 

That's a good way to look at it. I might just either be too cheap or just used to paying subs (even though i shouldn't afford it sometimes ) to want to spend too much there. Actually, we were lucky in that we were subbed for the last few months before it went f2p, so we got a handful of Turbine Points from that... and yet they are still sitting there unused

 

Buy some new hats. There's always a hat on sale in the store.

 

If a cash-to-point system is used, I highly, highly recommend having denominations equal to the most common prices of things. It's annoyed me to no end that the PSN and XBLA have a large number of games for $15 (or its equivalent), but no option to just add $15 worth of credit to the console. You either have to spend $20 or (and this is a petty complaint complaint, really) do two transactions, one for $10 and one for $5.

 

That's the psychology of it - many gamers will add the extra $5 as it's less hassle to do one transaction.

 

Then I'm trolling them by not, or the psychology doesn't work on me. Maybe having a degree in it makes me immune? O_O

I just have to be more conservative with my money.

 

You may be the exception rather than the rule. Companies make cash from the majority in cases like that, so it's no biggie if a few slip through their clutches.