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REALITY CHECK- Campaigns- Let's talk dollars and cents.
{DD} Smelly
✭✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I think the vast majority of us agree that DB way overvalues legendary characters, so I'm guessing none of us are going to be surprised if the price for the premium campaign rewards are beyond what most of us find reasonable.
So hypothetically, for the sake of this discussion, let's assume the first legendary they actually offer for money is YOUR most desirable legendary in the game. What would YOU be willing to pay for it?
Personally, while I think the other premium rewards are a nice bonus, I can't say that I'd actually buy them on their own for any price. So for me, I'd be basing my purchasing decision solely on the value of the legendary. That said, I'd go as high as $20 for Killy, but beyond that, what I'd be willing to pay for other characters would drop to zero pretty fast. So I'm curious what your thoughts are?
So hypothetically, for the sake of this discussion, let's assume the first legendary they actually offer for money is YOUR most desirable legendary in the game. What would YOU be willing to pay for it?
Personally, while I think the other premium rewards are a nice bonus, I can't say that I'd actually buy them on their own for any price. So for me, I'd be basing my purchasing decision solely on the value of the legendary. That said, I'd go as high as $20 for Killy, but beyond that, what I'd be willing to pay for other characters would drop to zero pretty fast. So I'm curious what your thoughts are?
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About 9000 honor
2200 merits
200 chrons
4 10x premium shuttle boosts
4 10x standard shuttle boosts
300,000 credits
8 2x shuttle rewards
8 rental shuttles
432 dilithium
4 10x premium pulls
4 single premium pulls
1/4 super rare
1/5 legendary
And this is spread out over a month. Now what would you value THAT as?
Well, the beta is scheduled to last for 7 days, so I'm using that as the baseline as to how long campaigns will last, and it's already been stated that each campaign will be purchasable on it's own, unless I misinterpreted that. If campaigns lasted a month, I might be even less willing to buy them.
I have spent twice or three times that amount on a few months, but never on one offer. I know that I wouldn't feel like it was worth the expense, if I spent more than that for one character. After all it's just a card in a game that I may look at a couple of times during the next months or years and, best case, use as a temporary profile picture.
Not saying that this should be everyone's take on it, by the way. If you feel comfortable spending more, then there's nothing wrong with that.
Well, that would CERTAINLY up the appeal.
For these desperately-wanted crew, $25 for a single star or maybe $50 for multiple stars would be the limit. For the “nice to have” list, $10-15 for a single stat is about it. For anyone else that is useful for completing a tough collection or has a very specific use, probably $10. For any of the many “meh” 5* crew out there that would simple take up space, free might actually be too expensive - if I have a lot of 1/5*s that are useless I will eventually run out of crew slots as so many others have and 550 honor is not an acceptable substitute.
I think you are making too many assumptions about unknowns to try evaluating. You don't know that a month long campaign would have 4x the rewards as a 1 week one. So to the OP's point, disussing what you would pay for what you are currently beta testing is an entirely different exercise from speculating what a month long campaign would look like.
Crew I'm looking to cite right now:
Crew I'd be interested in citing after that group is done:
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
I stand by my original philosophy that this could be a great subscription/season pass approach for the game [on top of monthly card], which may rejuvenate the middle ground players (aka fish, dolphins, whatever).
I want DB to play around with the rewards, stretch them out, but would ultimately like to see the following on a monthly basis:
- Cost on par with monthly card. (£3.99 for me)
- That’s £3.99 per month, no higher or more frequently, whatever way they need to structure it.
- A 1/5* legendary as the prime reward.
This approach considers that while a legendary can be bought for £9.99, if you’ve put in the work for a whole month you get one for £3.99.
I’m excited to get some of my army of 1/5 and 2/5 crew useful.
I would be onboard with this.
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
But, I am not willing to pay $25 on anybody anymore.
That is a far cry from when I first started out and needing med bought all the cadet offers for the event where AoS Crusher was the featured legendary.
That was a total of $175.00 back then that was all of them. I ended up with a FFFE AoS Crusher and a 2F that became 3F with one more from rank.
I directly received 3 AoS from offers, the other 4 was from 20 event packs.
So maybe I was thinking I was spending 175.00 for 5 legendaries could have been three or it could be like I got. So I was spending $35 per a legendary then.
But, with chance $58 per.
Once one has established crew the gain of a level of a legendary is small.
Basically, I can have someone take over the top spot over someone else with that skill. So as time goes on our price we are willing to pay goes down.
I doubt I will pay for that tier. But I will thankfully take the free one.
Maybe the price will be right from time to time. I doubt it I see DB charging around $50 for the tier. That being said, since it does require day to day activity for a period of time, I will say they reduce that price to $30.
You do make some interesting points. The one thing I do forget, what if we cannot be on everyday. How much chance do we have of getting legendary when we miss days. With that thought, I have to change my thought to what they will charge to $10. For me my thought was initially $50. I brought that down to $30 because we need to do things everyday. But now with the thought of, I the player may have to miss days and what that could mean to my chances of getting legendary, brings the price to $10.
It passes the time when I’m bored
Whether the monthly card is the teaser offer, discounted because of delayed gratification, or intended to get you to log in daily is up for debate, but a 5* crew after doing tasks every day for a month seems more similar to a monthly card than a one time purchase.
The monthly card provides 7 times the value of the purchase. So using that as a factor and the $10 offer for a 5*, I could see the argument for going as low as $1.5 for premium tier. If they make it a slightly worse deal and its in the $2-$5 range I could see it. But anything above that doesn't seem reasonable for requiring a month of activity to earn.
You could just not read it if it bothers you. I asked a pretty specific question in case you missed that.
Now as for the price point....I’d be tempted to try a few weeks for the $1 range. I would maybe buy once in a while at the $5 range if it’s a card I already have (Dom Troi, Mirror Crusher, Braxton, Flyboy Paris(whom I don’t have but want) and probably a few others I can’t think of). If it’s more than that I’ll probably just take the 4* for honor and the other basic goodies and move on about my day.
Having said that if you have to buy a card every week that would be silly. It should be a monthly card purchased at the same time as your di card. ( if you buy one). That gives you 3000 di for $5.00 roughly depending on platform and world currency exchange rate. The monthly average rewards list above is only slightly more than what could use your 3000 di on. (Excluding the 1/4,1/5 cards. But as someone else pointed out those 1/5 cards are on sale for $10.00 and the avail one now Durango Troi was just sold for that price, and both of those cards are older. If the monthly cost is going to be more than the cost of a 1/5 offer then why buy it. We can collect or build the rest of the stuff already.
Another possible thought could be a combo purchse where you get a discount for purchasing both. Such as $12.00 US.
No
It is also something to do as @Banjo1012 said.
I'd be willing to pay $9.99 for my most desirable or any strongly desirable card. I'd be willing to pay $9.99 on a regular basis if the reward included a citation option.
While I generally agree that DB overvalues legendaries, I think this in part is a matter of what you consider their starting point valuation.
There are a number of ways to get a gold star for about $10 (taking into account the cash value of dilithium kickbacks, with admittedly a good deal of variance +/-):
My rationale for why $9.99 is OK is, it's only something spent once or twice a week on offers or new things like Campaigns, and that's not an insane amount to spend on entertainment these days. Not everyone can bear that price, and not everyone will think the entertainment they get from it is worth the $, but the basic number isn't cray-cray. Clearly it's beyond monthly card spenders' personal comfort zones, so there's a strong argument for make it lower than $10.
If you start from assuming a DB valuation of $10, and assume that everything above ($25 DYC, Tue/Wed roll the dice crew packs, $50 buy-outright event crew) is charging a ghastly premium for "I want it NOW", then I think the question is, is ~$10 overvalued. That's a matter of judgment. Certainly multiplying it by 5 to get the full value out of your card ($50) seems overvalued. And the value of star #2/5 is especially problematic, since it does nearly nothing for performance other than unlock its potential after more future $ or work. That's a serious problem.
Wrapped around all of that though, I think we shouldn't forget this is a way for newer players to get an assured legendary before being able to win Events or have to gamble on packs. If I were to rewind myself about a year, that's kind of huge. I can see a newer player in crew-building mode being excited about this.
That being said, if the monthly card price point is used, this could be the perfect way for older and less useful cards to make their way onto players rosters as has been requested. DB still makes a few bucks and players get to fuse the plethora of old 1/5s sitting on rosters at a reasonable cost. Anything more and I think we will be looking at comparing it to the moving of the old legendary from 150K VP to 400K VP during events (i.e. teasing us for a week and then revealing the price - I can't see a price point so they are probably looking for feedback).
That is my hot take as a marketing guy with only cursory data available to me. I reserve the right to be horribly wrong