Skin situation; Make all skins buyable with coins AND cash (win win...)

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
21

They could but it´d be bad business for the future of the studio, a game earns the lion´s share of what it can upon launch and from basegame sales normally unless you have a supermassive DLC and a lot of fans hanging around.

Recoloring a basic armor wouldnt not be so much work but why really bother? And taking assets from vt1 and porting them to vt2? Every single one used would need a paintjob before being redeployed.

Time spent on production is correlated with how many working on it, if you got one poor sod going back and forth between the drawing board and his boss then it takes more time but you can also have several doing it. Either results in higher costs.

But assuming you are indeed right and Fatshark are hoping to sell say 5000 units per career skin they make, and each take either 3 people going for a month and or 3 months for lone fellow, then the following is true :

Cost = 9000£
Value of units sold = 50 000
Profit pre taxes&whatnot = 41 000
5x = 205 000 pre taxes.

205 000£ eh? Thats a tidy sum i´d say, it´s enough to pay 68 dudes for one month…wait how many employees does Fatshark have again? 80?

Aight so assuming they are actually looking to sell a whooping 10 000 units per skin.

Cost = 9000
Value of sold units = 100 000
Profit =91 000
5x = 455 000

455 000! Now this is a loaad of money. You can pay 151 dudes for one month…or you know, 80 dudes for almost 2 months.

…

So yeah they are certainly looking for big profit margins here, but on the other hand they do not have any other source of income aside from the relic pack given they basically handed out chaos wastes for free.

Animations? The Norscan warriors look different but basically fight the same so they can use the same animations just fine. As for skins? Crude armor ontop the nearly naked dudes we got right now and it´s done.

And balance for a mob in a game like this is dirt cheap, just slap some numbers in there and tweak sometimes.

Making a brand new map meanwhile? Costs are gigantic.

Ever heard what happens if you give in to bullies?

The skins do not cost 90£ so lay off the hyperbole would ya x)

Realistically on average people might want 1 or 2, that´s 20£.

Too bad for you then. But reality is that not everyone can be pleased and the majority wants new actual gameplay content. I personally do not give a single fig about any of the new skins.

If EA or Ubisoft on a bad day made this stuff we´d be looking at 15-20£ per skin(they might´ve glowed a little more) and in hindsight i´d not be surprised if the chaos wastes update cost about 20-30£ and the weapons were sold for 2-3£ each.

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22

What possessed you to make this leap of logic? Just this paragraph alone proves that you have put exactly zero thought into your argument as you haven’t the faintest as to why FS went with this business model. A free content update means that more people will try it out and overall more stick around to keep playing.

And a comment like the one below from Hedge just backs up what I am saying about keeping the update free:

They just want players to try their update, play it for however long of a period, then go play something else after. Maybe drop back again when more content is ready.

No to mention player retention. A topic Fatshark struggles with due to a multitude of factors including but not limited to difficulty scaling, the whole loot schtick(something which they have cleverly circumvented with Chaos Wastes), and a tutorial which explains nothing.
The entire premise of Chaos Wastes is that a new player only needs to get to level 35 to enjoy the power trip Vermintide can be without having to spend hundreds of hours gearing up in reds.

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23

The only genuine issue I see here is the pace of releasing shilling cosmetics, which is admittedly abyssmal. Yeah the last batch of premium skins are a bit on the pricey side, but you can always wait for a sale or, I dunno, not feel like you need to/are entitled to own every single premium cosmetic that is released. CW being free means no splitting the playerbase based on their disposable income, and improves the value proposition of the base game even further, which is a pretty smart decision for potentially pulling more people into the game (which benefits everyone currently playing it with more lobbies and a better online experience).

The model seems pretty good to me, and at pointed out by other people the game is already a pretty excellent value proposition if you just wanna play it and don’t need any/all premium cosmetics to enjoy yourself (y’know, like the vast majority of people).

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24

Apart from all the good arguments against pricing the same items in real money and shillings that are discussed above, there is another good reason to not do that: It’d create an incentive for the devs to make shilling purchases damn near unviable. Deliberately or uncounsiously; If the earnings of the studio get affected by the rate at which shillings are given out and / or the way stuff is priced in shillings, that will result in the shilling system getting made more unfavorable in whatever way to stimulate real money purchases.

Now, I’ll grant that the shilling economy right now does not work very well. Shillings get hoarded while nothing is added to actually do with them, which results in inflation. FS has painted themselves into a corner where pricing the shilling items properly is getting real difficult, because if you price new items normally everybody is going to just buy them all out as soon as they drop, while if you price them with inflation in mind the prices are going to be ridiculous for new players and the effort to gains ratio of the new items would be insane. That is a problem, I’m not denying that. This game needs a shilling sink. There have been several possible shilling sinks suggested on this forum alone, and I don’t want to start a discussion on that in this thread. However, my point is that if you try to cure the disfunctional shilling economy by mixing it with real money, you’ll eventually kill the shilling economy altogether and / or create a malignant mobile-game like situation where you feel pushed to spend real money.

Apart from that, I agree with the others in this thread who say that it’s not a problem that the cosmetics are expensive because they are optional, and I think it’s fair that they could be seen as a sort of “tip” to thank FS for their work. I also agree that for the health of the game it is way better to not split the playerbase in gameplay, so free gameplay but paid cosmetics is a good system. And I also think that for those that don’t have “lots of money” like some of the above posters claim to have it is very generous of FS to provide free / super cheap gameplay affecting DLC but price a little more for relatively irrelevant things like cosmetics instead. I also think that expecting free DLC and super cheap cosmetics are unrealistic. Lastly, I too think that people who feel FS owes them that for some reason are entitled wänkers.

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25

I mean Frostysir has already brushed at this topic. But out of curiousity: How much of these 10 € (also, the skins are not 10 €, they are 5 - 8 €) do you think land at Fatshark?

We know that everything purchased on Steam has Valve’s fun cutof 30 % (larger studios can get a reduction by up to 10 % depending on prior sales, not sure if Fatshark reaches those tresholds). After this we also know that GW has another fun cut of unknown value as GW is very secretive concerning all IP and licensing related contractual issues. And this is before we even start talking about taxes which each company has to pay. Dubious information concerning these cuts can be found here: Report: Steam’s 30% Cut Is Actually the Industry Standard - IGN

At the end of the day, not a lot is staying with the actual developers (at least Fatshark doesn’t have to pay a publisher). Considering that Fatshark has more than 100 employees we can safely assume cost of about 5.000.000 € per year. And that is just personell cost. You also have to pay lots of other stuff like office space for example.

On the bright side, not everything of this has to be paid by the Premium Skins alone. There are past DLC’s and the main game as well. Also past released games also add on the revenue.

I would say that incentive exists anyway to a certain degree.

26

Because when u compare the price of one cosmetic to other items u can buy in the game you will realize its ridiculous. U can’t really compare this to other games. Price of ONE Shade skin is the same as Grail Knight/Engineer Bundle that gives career + cosmetics. Price is the same as DLCs that give 2/3 maps, weapon for each career and illusions for them. When makin this comparision you will realize theres no justification for the price to be that high. I understand they need to make money but this isnt the way. If u have cheaper cosmetics more ppl will think about buying them, if u have cheaper prices more ppl will buy few cosmetics rather than just buying one. A lot of ppl will either skip this cuz of the price or just buy one cosmetic for their fav career. If the prices were lower I would buy few of them, but since the price is so high I will end up buying one or none. Depends if HM gets something.

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27

Rather than comparing the price of cosmetics to the rest i just view it like this : Prior stuff was them being generous.

Can you imagine what Ubisoft or EA would charge for every item if they were the ones behind this stuff? I doubt we´d get a single map for anything less than 10£ , even the ported&repainted&slightly remade maps.

Entirely new maps would probably cost more and a DLC like chaos wastes would probably be equal to the base game at least…But as for the premium skins we got now, they are just not inside the whole “we are nice program” so they are sold at a rather normal price if comparing vt2 to other games that also dabble in skins.

I think this is the bigger problem if we are asking what might hold sales back, not the price.

If i had to guess what drove this decision to have a relatively higher skin price relative to other cosmetics we have been able to buy then i´d put it down to a matter of unit value vs amount of buyers.

Its not unlikely that Fatshark got statistics telling them that people usually got one or two characters that they play mainly and invest their time in, which makes it likelier for them to not spend real money on other characters even if decent cosmetics are made for those too.

That means to earn money you´d want to set a relatively higher price per unit since you wont be selling more than 1 or 2 per person anyway.

Even if you set the price at 5£ you´d probably only sell 3 to one person at best, at least i think so since i doubt someone really feel that invested in all 5 characters. And while the present model does suck for those who do i´d be surprised if the present model isnt much better realistically.

28

Because when u compare the price of one cosmetic to other items u can buy in the game you will realize its ridiculous. U can’t really compare this to other games. Price of ONE Shade skin is the same as Grail Knight/Engineer Bundle that gives career + cosmetics. Price is the same as DLCs that give 2/3 maps, weapon for each career and illusions for them. When makin this comparision you will realize theres no justification for the price to be that high. I understand they need to make money but this isnt the way. If u have cheaper cosmetics more ppl will think about buying them, if u have cheaper prices more ppl will buy few cosmetics rather than just buying one. A lot of ppl will either skip this cuz of the price or just buy one cosmetic for their fav career. If the prices were lower I would buy few of them, but since the price is so high I will end up buying one or none. Depends if HM gets something.

+1

Rather than comparing the price of cosmetics to the rest i just view it like this : Prior stuff was them being generous.

lol, yes im so happy the base game did not cost 5000 or 10 000$, I’m so grateful for that!

Can you imagine what Ubisoft or EA would charge for every item if they were the ones behind this stuff? I doubt we´d get a single map for anything less than 10£ , even the ported&repainted&slightly remade maps.

Entirely new maps would probably cost more and a DLC like chaos wastes would probably be equal to the base game at least…But as for the premium skins we got now, they are just not inside the whole “we are nice program” so they are sold at a rather normal price if comparing vt2 to other games that also dabble in skins.

What world are you living in, 10€ for one map, I dont like EA but who ever did this? :smiley: Its VERY RARE if it ever happens.

And the reason they increased the price of the skins is because they noticed before that people pay for cosmetic’s with their DLC in DLC scheme (also unheard of before). Now they push it even further to see if it works… and guess what they will do next time? Next time its 20€, next 40€, and as long as a few ***** are buying they will increase the price. They can do whatever they want and stupid people will come up with whatever explanation.

Sure WC is worth something,

(but not to all players, I think many don’t care about CW, and I think it will die very quick, a bit like WoM did, even if its not as bad in its design, it still have some major flaws).

I’m sure a majority of the players would prefer an expansion with new units and maps and weapons, that cost like 10-35€, depending on what’s in it. And coin skins would be added along the way so people have something to grind for. Its very simple. But instead Fatshark was lazy and did not design new units, so they had to com up with this bad plan of free DLC, and then sell weapons and (lol priced) skins as extras.

29

Not so much greed per item as splitting a single game into the skeleton of the game and then all the extra parts into DLC stuff. Or just ruining a game series with horrendously rushed production in hope of milking money out of it. But make no mistake they do love micro transactions too.

Star wars battlefront 2, Anthem, Sims,Battlefield V, Fifa games, Dead space 3, a fair lot of mobile games, Mass effect 3&andromeda…they got a history of this stuff.

As for ubisoft? The first case that comes to mind was the treatment of the heroes of might and magic series, they utterly killed by doing pretty much everything they could wrong. And charging a lot of money for a DLC before dropping support for the game right after…

As for designing units vs new maps, i seriously think you underestimate how difficult it is to make new maps from scratch that arent filled with holes and crazy bugs. Especially when compared to making new units according to a format they already have.

The worst part of animating a new unit is having a functional “skeleton” if we call it that, but once you do you can slap a number of skins on it and you suddenly have a heap of different looking units.

From there you just give those units different stats and volia, plentifully varied mooks that dont really offer much at all in gameplay…no, if Fatshark was going for new units they need to be sufficiently different but what would fit from the warhammer universe and the location?

Choices are Skaven, Beastmen, Norscans and demons.

Skaven we already got but they are kind of a stretch up there anyway, Beastmen? We could use a special from them but the community hates beastmen so no one will cry over missing those.

Norscans? How many flavors of raiderdude do you want? Because the community does not like basic enemies that can do projectiles. Spears are hated like the plague too. And shields.
…

Nah the only choice was demons, but would adding in demons have a point? Not really, because the only demons the U5 could fight are the weak ones(smaller number of nurglings) who don’t add any real fun anyway. So there wasnt really any faction that´d be a good fit.

And the last lord class enemy we got was not welcomed at all, so a boss then? In my opinion that would actually have been nice but on the other hand it´s not a disaster. Plus if they wanted new units they´d be paying games workshop a heap so anything made would become pricier just because of that.

And we still would probably have to pay for them making skins because they´d be paying GW for usage rights. If lucky not as much as now but still looking at like 6-7£ for both the hat&body i´d figure.

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I don’t play as much as I used to, and I know this is happening in the industry, but mostly in Mobile games kind of, that’s why we have to be very careful when this move into the PC realm. This could very easy destroy the whole PC market if left unchecked.

But its same with all games who do this kind of things, I just refuse to buy their stuff and so should all, then the problem would be solved very quick.

As for expansion, orcs would be a very good choice, they are a bit different and there are tons of units to choose from, a bit like skaven.

And yes a new boss would be very nice and a few new specials…

Lots of things could be added.

31

those remakes are still completely unique and aren’t carbon copies of the V1 equivalent maps.

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32

Orcs? I dunno…wouldnt they be too similar to the Norscans in the end? Axe wielding tough guys but instead of skinny sick guys we´d have goblins. And heck instead of a chaos troll we´d just get a stone troll or such.

Or a big angry spider (Shudders)

33

Give me free stuff! - no no not that free stuff, the better stuff!
If you’re sweating over $10 skins you dont have to buy I think its time to find a job.
Literally was just handed a free DLC that probably took the better part of a year to make if not more. FS doesn’t pay its expenses with your shillings lmao.

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If Orcs were here they will fight against U5 but more importantly, they will be fighting against Chaos much harder. This is why other factions are very unlikely to be added now; they aren’t allies of Chaos.

35

Nah, orcs make 0 sense. I’d rather Fatshark expand the current factions.

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Aight.

So do tell, how would you keep a game studio going if you arent selling your content for a price that earns you enough money?

10£ a piece might sound like a lot, 10£ a piece sold to 10 000 people might sound like even more, sold to 50 000 might sound like a gigantic pile of money. Then you realize that its just about enough to pay their employees two months worth of salaries and suddenly you realize it aint actually a lot for a large group selling stuff.

Profit margins are massive sure, but so are their expenses.

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This has to be a copy pasta that I’ve missed.

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39

Aight.

So do tell, how would you keep a game studio going if you arent selling your content for a price that earns you enough money?

10£ a piece might sound like a lot, 10£ a piece sold to 10 000 people might sound like even more, sold to 50 000 might sound like a gigantic pile of money. Then you realize that its just about enough to pay their employees two months worth of salaries and suddenly you realize it aint actually a lot for a large group selling stuff.

Profit margins are massive sure, but so are their expenses.

How have game makers done this for decades? They make something good and sell it as an expansion. Its not rocket science :smiley:

They also had employees during all those years and they did not sell the games in small pieces or used micro transactions…

Its when mobile games got popular and the younger generations started accepting this micro transactions and DLC and DLC in DLC crap that things started to go wrong.

Horse armour in Skyrim was one of the first that got a bit of a meme i remember…

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Oblivion

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Ah yes ofc, Oblivion i mean :slight_smile: