Comparing cosmetics in other games that are significantly older and have a completely different art style may not be the best idea but I do believe the benefits of this specific type of paid cosmetics will be beneficial to the community.
I believe there to be two important points (anything directed at “you” is just a general you. Not addressing anyone specific here):
Firstly, if you dont want to pay for a hat then dont pay for a hat. You are hindered in no way from playing the game. If others agree, no one will pay for a hat and the price will come down. While I agree that there is nothing wrong with commenting on the price of cosmetics, some tend to take it to the extreme and get angry at the cost. No one is forcing anyone. Let’s all relax :D.
Secondly, should you decide you dont want a hat and others do, you get free content which now the whole community gets. People have been complaining about these expansions splitting the community and now everyone has access to them (assuming the premium cosmetics are a success). This will do wonders for the player base, especially those outside the main population centres like central Europe or the US.
That being said, Fatshark needs to bring out more cosmetics for LE than the steam store. The only downside to premium cosmetics is if they are prioritised over the free content that was promised.
It would be interesting to compare a wider range of games that contain premium cosmetics. I haven’t checked personally because I’m not too fussed about them but a wider dataset wouldnt do any harm to facilitate an informed discussion.
You should make a laaaaarrrgee bow around Dead or Alive or games like Gal*Gun or generally fighting games and/or certain types of japanese games. There are a lot of precedents where cosmetics are far more expensive than the base game. Actually, I would dare to say it is even the norm and the cases where paid cosmetics are cheap and numerous are the exceptions.
Noone is arguing that the content/price ratio is “different” or outright - “awful” to their other DLCs. But the reason for this has been stated and is known.
They have openly and transparently said that the pricing is in order to enable potentially free future content which is why the profit margin is so large in order to the production cost. This isn’t even an open secret. It has been stated like this.
Just a question: Would you feel better about the pricing if they added a single line to the DLC cosmetics like: “These DLC’s are meant as a support for potentially free future content.”
Also if we take the support function of these DLCs into consideration, you should remember that from the 3 € (average) these cosmetics cost 30 % alone will be eaten by Valve’s fee. And if you then add taxes and GW licensing fee as well I would be surprised if FS sees even an euro from each sold DLC. So in short: Buying these cosmetics is equal to spending FS 1 € (1,50 € IF they are lucky with taxes).
Have you seen outfit prices in Dead by Daylight. Why does it matter how much they cost, if a hat was 7 dollars it wouldnt affect me one bit, only in a positive way, because i would get free content. Better then releasing paywalled difficulties or strong dlc weapons.
This is explained by my cookie story in my first response. It’s not like we have to pay for dlc’s + selling cosmetics, If we wanna compare other games, for example Dead by daylight has a battle pass, dlc killers which cost money + expensieve cosmetics.
Thats exactly what the premium hats are for, if you wanna support them before or after they fix the bugs you can do so by buying a hat. i think they do care, they just have some problems in their company i’m pretty sure, not that its an excuse.
its BECAUSE you will get FREE dlc for the ENTIRE lifespan of vermintide 2!!! and its FREE for YOU if you dont wanna BUY a hat!
Actually you’re right. Don’t remember which game did that then.
That’s not true though. You do know that in game as a service, since PROVIDED CONTENT is free, the cosmetics cover the cost. Dead or Alive, Street Fighter etc for example, provide a lot of cosmetics far more expensive than this.
Yeah, but what future content? When will it come out? They’ve never been any good at sticking to roadmaps / plans. I’m not sure why we should think all the sudden they’re going to figure it out now.
Also, call me old-fashioned, but I’d much rather pay for maps that I want to play than buy cosmetics in the hope that future state they’ll add content I want. But then, I’m not the target market for paid cosmetics; I don’t buy that stuff in any of the games that I play.
I always like to perform this perspective exercise. At first I was like oh 4 quid is a lot but then I remembered that someone spent a good few days creating this hat and I’ll occasionally throw away £3 on an overpriced coffee that someone spent 1 min making. The Anvil of Doom brings me months of joy, while the coffee will bring me minutes and leave me with an irritated digestive system.
And you see, that is exactly the beauty of this. You don’t have to pay anything in order to access this potential future content. It is like a lottery where you can win something without buying a ticket. So, actually it isnt even a lottery. You can win something with zero risk. Why is that a bad thing?
It’s a bad thing because it’s a perverse incentive that makes the gameplay experience worse. Subscription MMOs, cosmetics microtransactions, and ad-supported free-to-play all suffer from this. The game developer is basically monetizing your time/attention, so they monitor playtime metrics when tuning the game & make adjustments just trying to keep your eyeballs on the screen longer. That often takes the form of grindy challenges & achievements instead of new content, nerfed XP gain just to make the game take longer, and low-quality content. It’s usually cheaper to add a bunch of simple addiction hooks than to make things like detailed & immersive maps, engaging AI, etc. – and the gameplay stuff isn’t what earns the money, so gameplay development becomes seen as just a cost to be minimized, not an investment with an ROI.
(Fatshark already did a lot of this stuff, even without any monetization incentives behind it. I kinda think they just saw other companies doing it and copied those things because it was an assumed “best practice” or something, not really understanding why other companies tune games in that way. But this isn’t going to make them change for the better; if anything, this feels like doubling down.)
I’ve been kinda burned out with V2 ever since the first 2.0 beta, but this kinda stuff might just be the last nail in the game’s coffin for me. I’m leaving it installed for the moment and idly following along to see what happens, but I’m not optimistic about the direction it seems things are going.
There are like a lot assumptions in that text. Even if there are enough precedents, they still stay assumptions and do not indicate that this will happen with Vermintide. If anything, FS knows best that a part of their community throws faces at everything to do. And even with the cosmetics, there is still a ROI. They have seen what happens if they go in the wrong direction like with 1.6. So they still have to pay attention to keep the community which will not be the case if the add low-quality content. That is why these assumptions are unreasonable.
Personally, I have lost interest with Vermintide around April? 2019 shortly after the game became a disaster with the release of 1.6. Ever since the 2.0 Beta I got more motivation again. Finally, we see diverse builds in Cataclysm and LEgend instead of Axe n’ Falchion every time. Finally, we have multiple viable builds per career. Finally, we have so many more viable weapons and working niche playstyles. I like the direction the game is taking ever since August when some minor changes have been made to the combat, the talents have been changed to make classes actually interesting and we got a lot of new content with the Weaves and Beastmen and the Emporium. I mostly see improvement. I don’t need the bugs though.
But yea, getting burned out with a game is normal. Even if you like it over the whole duration you play it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the direction got worse. Just that the gameplay loop doesn’t keep the same hold onto you than before.
I’ll just have to disagree with basically everything you said there; I do not like the changes they made with 2.0. (And I think WoM would have been a much better “if they go in the wrong direction” example – it’s still at only 30% positive on Steam. And most players that I’ve talked with think the game would be better if they just cut their losses and removed Weaves from the game.) The game is finally playable again in 2.0 after they fixed the most severe bugs, but combat does not feel dynamic or exciting to me; it’s just tedious like V1 was. Controlling enemies via stagger is strong, but it’s also very boring. I don’t enjoy the type of gameplay that the modern combat system is tuned to encourage. Single-target weapons are relatively weak now, and crowd control is emphasized over mobility.
(As an aside, I was never an A&F user in 1.6. Never really liked that weapon. My preferred options were Axe with WHC, Falchion with BH, and Flail with Zealot.)
But anyway, I don’t begrudge you your fun, if you’re enjoying the game. I just personally see no reason to feel optimistic about the game right now.
I still have mixed feelings about the whole buyable hats strategy.
On one hand, as several people said before, the hats should be seen as not just buying a hat, but also as a sort of “tip” to FS, as an appreciation for all their work updating the game and the free map(s). That’s why FS try this way of generating income. Apparently their old model of selling maps wasn’t profitable enough for one reason or the other, so they try to take this route of free maps but also paid cosmetics that double in function as a way to voluntarily donate to FS in support. I can’t blame FS for trying this: They need to see what way of running their buisness works best for them and us fans. Sometimes you just need to try stuff. And they’ve been honest about their intent and methods from the start. They implemented paid cosmetics in the most ethical way possible, and prevented it from affecting the regular aquirement of cosmetics (like buying shillings for real money or an equivalent undoubtably would have).
On the other hand, however, I also still share a fear with @mahkra , in that this system could create a perverse incentive, where more effort ends up being spent on stuff specifically meant for selling instead of quality gameplay content itself. I would happily pay for quality map packs, new weapons, new enemies, etc… And in that system the incentive for FS would be to solely focus on producing such stuff, instead of also spending effort on making more crazy but sellable hats or something.
In the end, I’ll reserve judgement for now, though. Let FS run this expiriment. See how it goes. I can see the potential benefits like the ones mentioned in this thread, and I hope the more pessimistic views I and some others hold will prove unfounded. Only when it’s clear what the actual outcome of this trial is, and especially when we see how FS responds to that, I’ll be able to decide how I feel about the hats. Before then I’m still optimistic, mainly based on how FS has handled this thing so far.
Its absolutely appaling that the only real cosmetics are paid and even more so when the only hats fitting the colorscheme of the armors are under them. Placed in a mountain of trash that can be farmed ingame.
Get some bad stuff to be acquired without money - set in contrast to way better things buyable for, on the first glance, small sums.
Thats basic f2p mobilegame marketing applied here and without doubt not coincidental.
Fatshark going down the exact same road as Telltale Games, having a bloated team constantly producing stuff no one ever asked for, costing an absurd amount of money. Telltale at least had the decency to not rip off their customers at any opportunity.
Basic f2p mobile game don’t really work that way.
F2P mobile game do make you pay to accelerate the grind of the core game (something we can’t do there). They’re creating a good and rewarding loop of stuff to do, and then, when you advance in the game, the progress becomes increasingly slower until you hit a paywall.
This is not the case there.
Here, we have a way to fund future content of the game.
I won’t lie. I do prefer the dlc model, but as the cataclysm discussion went, I see that people actually don’t want to pay for their new stuff (I mean, you spent all your time in the game, you reach cataclysm and then you complain about it being paid ? wtf ?).
This is Fatshark’s Answer. And this is way less greedy than real microtransactions (aka buyable shillings in real money).
I do wait though, for the really new non-premium cosmetics to drop in the Lohner’s shop, like it was presented to us. (I guess they’re late on this part, so, of course, the new ones can’t really compare to the old ones in term of quality)
I honestly can’t agree with the idea of buying as a tip, or as a gift or a thank you or whatever. I’ve spent a huge amount of time in VT and clearly love the game, but fatshark are a company, not my friends. I think it’s unhealthy to have any more of a relationship with them than that, you should buy the hats if you like the hats, not because of some vague promise or as a weird corporate gift.
Assuming all goes perfectly and the future content is all free and we aren’t completely locked out of cosmetics I don’t personally mind buying some, but I think it’s insane to buy a hat on the promise of future completely unannounced content.
Regardless of that though, I think the costs of the individual hats is still absolutely insane. A single hat is not half a full DLC’s worth of effort.
So, the first concept of making normal DLC for money didn’t pay out, because they allowed part of the DLC content to be accessible for FREE.
Then the second model didn’t work, because they put stuff behind paywall that people wanted for FREE.
So people basically don’t want to pay for game play - influencing stuff.
Am I too old or am I missing something completely obvious beside expecting these people to pay for HATS, who didn’t pay for maps when they could be played for free, who don’t want to pay for cataclysm because it’s supposed to be free and who from now will get everything for free?
You’re missing influx of new players and player retention that make playing each mode doable in quick play. That’s kinda the point of making playing content free. Having people that play each mode in a good number.
People who don’t pay will not pay but will still play. People who can pay will pay (but they’ll pay MORE to compensate) and still play. People who want to pay “a part” can actually pay “a part” and still play.
