Increase in Premium store prices - some spectacular greed on display. One cosmetic, that’s the same but a different colour, is 35% more expensive for no apparent reason

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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I’ve noticed that the new release of cosmetics include an increase in prices.

Individual head cosmetics used to range roughly between 400-900 aquilas. This release there’s some head garments that are 1,400 aquilas. Edit: apparently this has happened before, I personally don’t recall them ever being that high but I’ll take others’ word for it.

Both the Zealot & the Psyker have a head garment that’s the (rough) equivalent of $10 Canadian. For a hat. You guys are asking me to pay 20% of the entire game’s value, for one singular hat. Really? A full 3 piece bundle is only 33% more expensive.

What’s wild to me, is that the full bundle comes with the EXACT SAME MASK, except white. Want to know how much that costs? 900 Aquilla.

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What in the world is going on here. I’m sorry, but this is just absolutely greedy and is leaving a horrible taste in my mouth.

EDIT: they actually RAISED the price of this cosmetic since release. When it came out it was 900 aquila, now it’s 1,400. Come on, this is just insulting at this point

There was also some criticism that complete bundles used to include a weapon skin & bauble, but now packs are just the clothing yet the price remains the same. This is an intentional decision to lower the value of the bundles, so they can sell extra stuff on top of the bundles for even more money. This is also incredibly greedy and anti-consumer.

So the FOMO practices started and weren’t really addressed much despite significant feedback against it. Then reduced value in the bundles. Now there’s continual increases in prices? What’s up with that? Are you just blatantly catering to whales at this point?

I don’t mind cosmetic MTX if the rest of the content is free (although I would argue that these MTX are also problematic because of the constant clipping/bad female character rigging, but that’s a different topic), but this is really starting to just feel like there’s a distinct plan just completely taking advantage of the average consumer via a slow pace of reduced value for money in the store.

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There were always headpieces for 1400 aquilas every now and then for all four classes.
I’d never buy them as you’re right they are extremely overpriced.

That’s just the cherry on top :smiley: But yeah, it’s really dumb to put the pieces into the shop at the same time as they are the same model.

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I’ve seen head pieces that cost that much before. Nothing new here.

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That black fanatics hood - “bring out the gimp”

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I don’t recall them ever being that expensive, but I’ll take your word for it. Post edited.

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I feel there could be a much better argument for how expensive these are, if the purchase price includes the model, and customization of colour. Like if the gimp mask that I showed in the post was $10, but I could have it in any colours I wanted, then that to me is far more justifiable. As it stands I find it very gross that they’re charging between 15-20% of the game’s base value for each individual colour of the same model.

Especially when they know black will be more desirable than the white, so they charge more for it.

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meh I feel like there’s a favoring of veteran with cosmetics pricing, looking back on my screen shots he’s had the most 400-700 range hats by far.

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Game devs discovered that they can harder monetise cosmetics in the last few years. You see it in a bunch of games where the top tier special cosmetics are now giga expensive because there are people out there willing to pay for the special cosmetic. Blizzard games, League of legends, destiny 2, halo etc all have this.

They got the idea from seeing the insane prices people are willing to pay in Valve games like CSGO and TF2 and Dota 2 for skins. That is the target market they are catering toward, the whales who pay stupid amounts for TF2 and CSGO and Dota 2 skins. So you can blame Valve for starting this, and the loot box era as well.

The nicest thing I can say is that special skins are the least toxic between special skins, battle passes, loot boxes, and gacha. So I’d rather special skins than those.

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yeah. At it’s base value, I can understand companies wanting to make more money. But there’s such a clear difference between the systems being used here, versus something like Deep Rock Galactic. The practices employed here feel so manipulative and anti-consumer compared to there. Over there, it feels like I’m supporting a dev team when I get some cosmetics. Here it just feels like I’m supporting Tencent.

A very common argument people say is “at least cosmetics don’t impact gameplay” and while that’s true, I think it severely undervalues how important cosmetics are as an experience. If cosmetics weren’t important, people wouldn’t be paying $10 for a hat. But they are. Of course cosmetics are important: they allow player expression and is a component of the game. Hell, there’s older games that I’d try to hunt down the most difficult achievements in the game because they gave the coolest cosmetics.

I appreciate that DT at least has a mix of earnable/premium cosmetics. I just wish that there wasn’t such a large gap between earnable & premium, and premium wasn’t so nickel and dimed using manipulative tactics as they are now. But yes, as it stands I agree it’s the least of the evils.

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Remember when they got backlash for not having a 2400 aquila pack?

Now they sell cosmetic bundels for 2100 and there’s no bundel for that price either. Lmao

It’s just the normal fomo and “no fitting bundel for the price” crap you see from every single greedy game like this.

I knew we were going to have to deal with this BS back when it was announced that DT would have “premium currency”.

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I think the black gimp hat was originally priced at 900 aquilas, when i looked at the store yesterday.
I remember comparing the price of the black mask to the white mask (when bought separately) and they were the same.

I went through the spam fest that is the DT discord’s Zealot channel, hoping to find someone posting screenshots of the store page on friday.
Well… i found one.

As you can see, the price WAS 900 for the black gimp mask and was later increased to 1400.

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The images of the other store pages show the same prices that we have as of now.
The psyker “cowboy hat” was already priced at 1400.

Here are the store pages for the other classes from the same time.

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Anyone @Fatshark care to explain?

and don’t give me any of this "it was always supposed to be 1400 BS, we all know it wasn’t

Gotta love the transparent intentions with the premium store! /s

Looks like you should’ve bought it back when it was 900 huh? :slight_smile: :gun:

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I can’t be the only one who just completely shuts out the thought of buying cosmetics once they get over a certain price right?

Like DT cosmetics are just so far outside the price range that I’d even consider impulse buying a cosmetic for.

Like I’ve gotten a lot of hours of enjoyment out of the game, I regularly throw money at DRG cosmetic DLC because even beyond my love of that game those packages actually feel like solid bling for your buck. It’s hard to imagine the whale hunting or whatever with these prices compensates the number of people that like me will just not put their hand in their wallet for cosmetics that are sometimes pricier than entire high quality indie games (or some embarrassing % of DT itself’s base price).

I mean I’m not that huge on cosmetics so I’m not terribly bothered, but I am extremely confused by the premium shop pricing in general. Almost all of the VT2 cosmetics I bought were when they were like 50%+ discounted at some point, at which point I did spend a decent amount of money but got to feel actually good about what I’d gotten in return.

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The premium currency is all it took for me to never even think of buying any.

I’m just so tired of seeing this street-level hussle crap in a goddamn game that’s supposed to be fun.

If you can’t put a direct pricetag on somethig that I’m supposed to buy then why wouldn’t I think you’re trying to swindel me?

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LoL, wtf is going on there.
Guess someone was like “Oh let’s milk the cow some more”.
What a shitty move.

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No you are not and unironically I think most companies would sell more cosmetics if the prices made bit more sense.
When stuff reaches that 10-20 € mark you are seriously going to have to have some good stuff for me to even consider it.

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when people get mad at marketing tactics
youre either for skins, against skins, or a chump

heh for skins

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I can’t judge wether these prices make economical sense or not - I just can say for me personally they are just (almost) prohibitive. I got the Steel Legion garb as the legion is one of my favourite IG Regiments and I always liked their lore and style. Never got anything else - if they ever bring out good death korps cosmetics I’ll get those too. I might even spend money on a proper Kasrkin outfit - but that’s it.
Were prices significantly lower I might have bought other stuff too and in the end might have been spending more money on cosmetics total…

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That’s outrageous. I don’t see how that’s even remotely defensible. Very gross

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