Is this a bad idea?

Discussion
1

We’ve been talking a lot on here about the live service game model, and how it impacts our enjoyment of Crossout.

But the question always remains, how else could Crossout fund itself? It’s too late to switch to a “buy it once, everything is unlocked” model, but I do wish it could.

Last night I had what might be a genius idea or might be a very dumb idea.

What if instead of packs, you could just directly buy the non-craftable part using real money? You could keep the player market for reselling and for buying and selling craftable parts, but by offering items like kapkans for a flat generic epic weapon price, it might stop those items from becoming so overpriced on the player market.

I’m not the type of person to ever buy a pack, because I think they are overpriced, and because I like obtaining items through playing the game. But even someone like me might be tempted to buy an Odin if I could.

You could argue this would make the game even more P2W, but I’m not convinced it would be any worse than the current situation, and I think it would feel less predatory.

Thoughts?

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devs are convinced that what theyre currently doing is the best strategy to milk their players.
they cannot fathom actually giving a single fuck about their players, in turn attracting more players and more potential buyers. if this game wasnt so shit, i might even be putting some money into it.

the only goal is maintaining short-term profits, and if this fails, potentially in the process of switching to a better model, somebody is getting fired.

i think crossout went the wrong way at some point and now developers are individually locked to this shitty business model.
but ultimately its just pure shit management in targem who caused everything

as to your idea of buying separate parts individually, its not gonna work in the current general model. whoever is upkeeping what is happening right now loves the fluctuations in prices of everything, they will keep putting in packs of whatever is popular / expensive, they will keep putting in p2w items that they “”“balance”“” later.
every single decision made by targem is purely short-term profit driven

3

How do fluctuations of the player market benefit the devs?
If you are trying to say that high market prices of good pack items motivate people to buy packs, how come most pack items aren’t going for much on the market, and why are the most important new items always in BPs?

If we set aside our attempts to read the minds of the bosses at Gaijin, what do you think of my actual idea? Would you like to be able to just buy the item you want for real money? And what would be a fair price?
Would $5 per epic item be out of line? Maybe $10 per legendary, and $20 for a relic?
Of course Gaijin wants to make money, and I would argue that selling people what they want at reasonable prices is a good way to make money.

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whenever something is expensive, it motivates players to buy the pack that contains the item.

i cant imagine the effects if your idea was implemented, but i imagine it would only make a bigger gap between free and paying players builds. there is already fusing parts and such, if there were some op payer-exclusive building parts, it just makes it more shit for players who try to optimize their build

i dont think there is any big issue with packs, its more so just balancing items, and the battle pass which i have a bigger problem with.

i am positive if they made crossout look like less of a p2w shithole to new players (or old players for that matter) more money would pour in than ever. that is just a speculation, but the short term profit driven decisions are killing the game.

devs would need to stand back and realise that the way to make a more attractive game is to actually balance their items instead of intentionally shoving p2w in, work on the general design of progression, and in the end even more players might spend some money on packs then there are now.

however the second theory is that devs never cared about new or existing players, the only people they cater to are whales who spend many thousands of dollars on the game, therefore adding monkey brain updates mainly to satisfy this small group of payers.

in any case i dont see into the heads of the people at targem (or even gaijin) and at most i can hope that at some point something changes

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How so? The current system creates artificial scarcity of pack-only items, because players can only buy them once, and because they are so expensive.
If you could buy the part directly for a reasonable cost, the player market should start to reflect that increased supply, making it also easier for F2P players to grind out those items.

If you look at the player market, the most expensive items are the ones that have artificial scarcity which is created by the system of packs and BP items.

If those items could be bought directly, it would completely change the player market, and also make it much easier for new players to get a CW build.

So ignore for a moment the question of whether the devs would like this idea. My real question is what players feel about the idea.
Are there items you would buy, if you could purchase just that item at a reasonable cost?
No reason they couldn’t also do this for decor items.

Yes, some players will try to game the system by purchasing items that are currently priced high on the market, but they would quickly crash the price of those items. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

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yes if you could sell those structure parts then i think it would be a sensible system

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I wasn’t even thinking about structure parts and armour, but why not? Could make the new player experience better for the more impatient players.

I do worry that a system like this could still feel too P2W, especially if upper tier items were too expensive. It would be a delicate balance to figure out pricing that is fair but also profitable enough.

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what we currently have is the highest level of accepted p2w possible and cannot get worse without being met with outrage (at least i would hope but one never knows with this community)

did you mean parts such as train or snow plow

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I definitely don’t want Crossout to become more P2W, but I disagree that they’ve already reached the maximum. If you look at the larger live service game market, there are much worse examples, especially in the mobile market.
But yes, that would be a bad thing for the game.

That’s what I thought you meant when you said “structure parts”. Wasn’t part of my original concept, but it could be.

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i think p2w is already pretty high in crossout. those games which have p2w worse than crossout straight up died.
but you cant compare a console / pc game to a mobile game, its just not the same market. mobile games are total abominations.

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The list of f2p models that aren’t almost universally hated by gamers is very short, because it’s made of a single entry: Cosmetics only.

I’ll accept absolutely no counterargument based on “but devs need money”, because LoL and PoE exist, and they’re 10 times more successful than any battlepass or lootboxes-driven gatcha turd.

Anyway, Crossout will never change its monetization, because its ran by Gaijin and Gaijin is a company that 100% runs on niche games with no competition filled to the brim with garbage anti-consumers scams. I don’t even think they believe it’s the most profitable model. It just works and they’re perfectly fine scamming fragile people for a living, period.

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This is definitely true, but from what I’ve read, even that model isn’t as profitable as it used to be, outside of a few very popular games.

This would be my ideal version of Crossout, but as you said, it’s not how Gaijin does things. And I’m not convinced that Crossout could ever be big enough to make that work. On the other hand, maybe they could get a lot bigger using that model. Hard to say.

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They do have a cosmetics center on their market page, but it’s a complete flop for obvious reasons. I have no idea how they couldn’t make that work. It’s some of the dumbest schit Crossout has to offer as far as really bad marketing management goes.

It seems like easy money to me, to just clock in and generate cosmetics packages. I don’t know why they haven’t made more of this feature, why the prices are so ridiculous, or who the hell thought it was a good idea to hide acquisition behind Crosscrowns, and actually obscure the ease with which a consumer ought to be able to simply make purchases. That’s the most ass-backwards capitalism I have ever seen…not to mention the quality of some of that crap.

Targem Games is running an add for a 3D artist, so maybe this is part of the issue. IDK.

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Well, an idea I had for a game to use microtransactions but have everything still available to F2P players would be two-sided currency exchanges, Crosscrowns to coin and vice versa, and every pack, BP, and CK being purchased with Crosscrowns instead of real money, with the option to purchase Crosscrowns themselves if they so desire. It never really made sense to me that you can convert premium currency to standard, but not the other way around.

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15

That was an issue with microsoft or playstation via their rules for their market place.

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16

this is just another strategy to abstract from the value of real money so that players spend more on the game. it should be made illegal

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I’m pretty sure it has more to do with credit transaction fees, refunds, and the how and who handles the issue.

If you purchase with real money it involves 4 parties: credit, platform store front, game company, player
If you purchase with in game store currency it only involves: game company and player.

There’s other factors with the platform stores have to deal with in regards to monitoring and moderating platform store fronts too. Which slow down changes to them. If you can do it in game then that issue goes away.

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I believe you are correct.
They would probably have to use crosscrowns for what I am proposing.

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i might be wrong but i believe they didnt have any currency in the middle a few years ago. i dont see how an intermediate currency affects transaction fees, refunds or issue handling. you still purchase that currency.

i think its nothing more than one of many dirty strategies to exploit players

20

Yet, somehow they manage to sell all three platforms multiple reoccurring battle pass content directly to the consumer, more cheaply in some cases than those cosmetic packs containing comparably rather scant product, and without involving the exchange rate shenanigan of Crosscrowns.

It was a very poorly navigated resolution to their own manufactured corporate issues, and the result is garbage for the consumer.

Do console players not have the ability to purchase the original “Customization Packs?” If so, why not continue to sell us “Customization Packs” directly, as they did those?

Seems like they could sell us periodic “Bling Passes” like (or instead of) the Battle passes just as easily and directly…point is, there is a lot they could have done that wasn’t as screwed up as what we ended up with. Their attempt to sell cosmetics the way they chose to is a profound failure.

I am familiar with their excuse for doing it the way they did, though. I just ain’t buying it (no sale), I doubt anybody is, and I’m not surprised they don’t. They should rethink their strategy with this, and round-file the version they have currently. It’s crap for whatever reason generated.

There is a lot they could do to doll this game up to be more marketable and consumer friendly. Instead they tend to invent new problems and just abandon old concepts, and rarely stick to one idea for very long before they pave over it with the next agenda, which tends to up-end game balance, undermining people’s loyalty by nerfing the inventories they’ve adoringly collected, and understandably frustrating almost everybody with a periodically very broken and unamusing game.

I have wondered if some of the issues I mentioned (frustratingly fluid and undependable game trends) aren’t due to software changes on their end. I know in my trade salesmen frequently destroy our company production by selling our employer “new and improved” software and machines, which often aren’t any improvement at all, but always entailed a new orientation period to learn the new garbage software and equipment and weren’t always compatible with the previous technology…it’s still stupid, but have seen this before, and it’s not a new thing (planned obsolescence).