7.99 for plantoids??!!

[The_Meme_Man]

Yes, but a little while back Paradox was kind enough to lay out their DLC pricing policies for the community:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/eu4-dev-diary-december-3rd-2015.894626/

The price was calculated based on development costs. The discussions in this threat aren't about costs, they're about value, which is far more subjective. Whether the value of this DLC is $5, $8, or $20 is going to vary from person to person, it's not a constant. If you've only played 10 hours and haven't touched Stellaris since release, the DLC probably isn't worth $8 to you, if you've spent several hundred hours playing, it's hard to argue it's not worth at least $8. What we don't want is Paradox pricing things based on perceived value, with is what many AAA game companies do; they're not going to produce a DLC if they think the value is lower than the cost, so such a pricing policy would only serve to increase prices (see Apple's business model). Pricing based on cost is more objective and better for the consumer.

So since pricing is based on cost to produce, the situation is really quite simple. If people are interested in this kind of DLC, they'll produce more, if people don't think that the value they get out of it is at least equal to the cost, and thus price, they won't make more...they simply can't afford to.

Personally, I'm not big on graphics, I can take them or leave them; Dwarf Fortress is a great game, even when played with ASCII characters. But, pretty games sell more copies, with means more money for Paradox to reinvest in both graphics and gameplay. In order to keep making pretty games, they need to keep their graphics team busy to pay their salaries, so it's in everybody's best interest to support DLCs like this.

However there are many other factors to pricing and purchasing than just resouce cost, and it is the consumer's virtue to question the price of a product he wants.

On the consumer's end, he can either 1) not buy it, 2) turn to a different company or service, or 3) argue the price. 3) is the option I took, since i as a customer clearly want plant portraits. Here, I argue that the price is too large. Paradox, as the priducer, then argues back to justify the price and convince me to buy it. Paradox can do many things to lower their price to what I want, like cut corners or do other stupid things, so they are also right and just to stand by their price and either disregard me as "1 loss", or make me see reason that 8 dollars is a good deal. Right now, I am not convinced, but I value Paradox enough as a producer that I still want to buy something, so now my deal is to wait for a sale, or get it with a big expansion for full price.

I suggested the timing with an expansion or patch release because customers are NOT rational. Paradox has a track record of making very GOOD deals that I as a consumer agree on when it comes to gameplay packs, and the emotional factor that consequently comes encourages me to get the cosmetic dlc. Its like how movie theatres work, where they overprice food but the movie ticket itself is pretty cheap, since people feel urged to eat food while watching a film.

 

[Tacticus101]

Out of curiosity, I looked and compared dl c costs for other space games. Most were 9.99, but included events and complete factions or gameplay changes (endless space, stardrive 2, etc). Many of galciv 3 dl c were 4.99, and some of those got less than positive reviews for not having enough content for the price. Just some comparison outside of paradox games.

None of the DLC you are comparing in endless space or stardrive 2 are cosmetic, the ones that got bad reviews in Galciv3 (and the one in stardrive 2) were the cosmetic ones, badly reviewed because they added very little. The Galciv3 ones basically just added 2 maps and the Stardrive 2 one added a few hulls.

In addition, all of those games "feature DLC" are basically what Paradox includes in free patches; they change game mechanics like reworking the weapon system in Endless Space or the Strategic map in Stardrive 2. In fact, the biggest complaints about those DLC (read the reviews) was that most of them should have been part of a free patch rather than forcing you to buy the DLC to keep playing the game. Personally, i would prefer to have a less cost effective DLC and have all that in a patch, and that is Paradox's policy.

Oh, and to play MP you need those DLC, unlike Paradox games where only the host matters.

 

[deeks]

I'd expect that when we get a content expansion/DLC the art team will be involved there. Until then, there's absolutely nothing wrong with cosmetic packs being produced for those who want to buy them.

A full on rules-changing DLC won't be coming quite this hard on the heels of the release - especially with them still doing game-balancing and minor (free!!) patches that already include art changes.

While I agree that it is better to have the art team working on cosmetic packs rather than sitting around idle while larger content DLCs are being worked on, I think a big part of the issue people have on this thread is related to timing and optics.

Having a cosmetic only DLC released before releasing paid expansions to address the gaps in mid and late gameplay looks to (at least parts of) the community like having your priorities backward. Even though the art team may have had the bandwidth to complete these assets now, it probably would've been smarter from a community management perspective to hold off on releasing them until after some of the content/depth issues are addressed.

 

[Soranya]

None of the DLC you are comparing in endless space or stardrive 2 are cosmetic, the ones that got bad reviews in Galciv3 (and the one in stardrive 2) were the cosmetic ones, badly reviewed because they added very little. The Galciv3 ones basically just added 2 maps and the Stardrive 2 one added a few hulls.

In addition, all of those games "feature DLC" are basically what Paradox includes in free patches; they change game mechanics like reworking the weapon system in Endless Space or the Strategic map in Stardrive 2. In fact, the biggest complaints about those DLC (read the reviews) was that most of them should have been part of a free patch rather than forcing you to buy the DLC to keep playing the game. Personally, i would prefer to have a less cost effective DLC and have all that in a patch, and that is Paradox's policy.

Oh, and to play MP you need those DLC, unlike Paradox games where only the host matters.

I think, while having a few flaws, PDX DLC Policy is great.
Just the pricing is a bit off in my opinion. (In this particulare case "a bit" = "a lot")

 

[Swazi]

oh man 8€ lol, assetto corsa dlc for 8€ gets you 1 laser scanned track and 7 licensed cars, each with it's own physics... and here you get a bunch of pictures...

and assetto corsa has a small team and racing simulators are a niche... assetto barely gets 2k players concurent while stelaris has 6k easy...

close to scam this is if you ask me....

 

[warvirus]

This is whats great about Paradox's current DLC model - you can pick and choose what you want based on your wants and what your financial situation allows.

A measly $8 doesn't bother me plus it helps a good game developer in their work.

 

[Phibs]

So, your parents would be proud that their 40-year old son wastes time on a video game and complains about the cost of said game rather than spend time with the young children who need guidance in a dark and dangerous world.

You have weird parents.

What's got you all hot and bothered? Run out of prune juice or something?

 

[corny.1234]

I bought it and tried it right now :
Positive:

• Great species portraits (even if there is some similitude with preexisting portraits)
• Great ships and stations

Negative:

• City art looks like the insects city
• No new emblem for flags

I think it's a bit overpriced for a purely cosmetic Dlc, but the portraits are really nice and give some flavour and more variety to the game.
I'm missing some plant emblems for the flag creation.

Edit: the ai empires finały use the dlc contents, at least for the plantoid Dlc.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I bought it and tried it right now :
Positive:

• Great species portraits (even if there is some similitude with preexisting portraits)
• Great ships and stations

Negative:

• City art looks like the insects city
• No new emblem for flags

I think it's a bit overpriced for a purely cosmetic Dlc, but the portraits are really nice and give some flavour and more variety to the game.
I'm missing some plant emblems for the flag creation.

Ah yes, gud idea. Some new flags would have actually made it worth the 8 dollars.

 

[corny.1234]

Ah yes, gud idea. Some new flags would have actually made it worth the 8 dollars.

Yes, I would love to see some flower symbols, root symboles... And this would be the easiest part for the art team (in my opinion)

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Civility, people.

 

[WrethZ]

I think they'd make more money if it was cheaper because so many more people would buy it that it would make up for the reduced price.

Sorry Paradox but you can't look at how many man hours it took to make the product, you have to look at what other companies produce for the same price, and based on that, from a consumer's point of view, this DLC is very overpriced.

 

[deeks]

If you've only played 10 hours and haven't touched Stellaris since release, the DLC probably isn't worth $8 to you, if you've spent several hundred hours playing, it's hard to argue it's not worth at least $8.

I think this misrepresents how a (purely rational) customer would perceive value as a function of time played.

I have over 200 hours logged in Stellaris, so I've certainly gotten my $70 worth ($0.35/hr and falling). However, for purchasing DLCs it's not based on the amount I've already played. It's based on how much additional time I will spend playing the game because of the DLC. The problem for purely cosmetic DLCs is that (for me), the answer to this question is 0 hours - I'm not going to spend any additional time to play with a plantoid avatar/ships/cities instead of a humanoid avatar/ships/cities. This means, based on measuring value as a function of time, that a purely cosmetic DLC is worthless (to me).

Clearly, the DLC is not worthless. This means a different method is needed to evaluate the value of a purely cosmetic DLC. I think an appropriate way to measure it would be to ask "how much additional enjoyment will this DLC bring over the number of hours I will play in the future". The problem for me is, right now, at 200 hours in, I've pretty much played out Stellaris. This again puts the value (to me) at $0.

Now, this will change whenever the future gameplay DLCs are delivered, but at this point it's unclear when those are coming and what features are going to be included. That's why I think that it would've been a better idea to hold off on releasing this purely cosmetic DLC until one or two gameplay DLCs have been released. It could have been done in parallel with one of those, and it would allow people to more clearly evaluate whether a cosmetic DLC is worth it to them.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I think they'd make more money if it was cheaper because so many more people would buy it that it would make up for the reduced price.

Sorry Paradox but you can't look at how many man hours it took to make the product, you have to look at what other companies produce for the same price, and based on that, from a consumer's point of view, this DLC is very overpriced.

Wiz already explained it.

 

[StJimmyRocks92]

Ah yes, gud idea. Some new flags would have actually made it worth the 8 dollars.

Didn't even think of this before, but yeah new flags would have have made it worth it to me too.

 

[WrethZ]

Wiz already explained it.

And I disagree with his/her reasoning.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I think they'd make more money if it was cheaper because so many more people would buy it that it would make up for the reduced price.

And PDS, apparently, don't think they would do so.

And since they are the ones who have a financial stake in the outcome, it seems likely that they have investigated the market more carefully than you and have a better idea of what will benefit them.

That's not guaranteed to be the case, of course, as everybody commits mistakes now and then, but it is the way to bet.

 

[Luckless]

We're a business. We're not going to sell products at a price that incurs a loss for us. If you want it but don't want to pay the price we're asking, I can only suggest waiting for a sale.

This is erroneous logic, sorry. Game always moves far more units than DLC so the profitability equation is different.

As a consumer presented with what I've seen so far from the Stellaris product, I'm going to have to suggest that the erroneous logic may equally lay on Paradox's side of the fence here. You're a business, it is literally the business's job to make content that we want to buy.

If you are seeing poor returns on DLC content due to vastly inferior sales volume to the core game, then maybe that is a sign that your DLC content design is not well tuned to what customers actually want? ie: Working content that makes the game different from what we've already played?


I do hope none of the staff take such comments too personal. Stellaris is a great looking basis to work from, but in its current stance it trips and falls on its face. So do forgive the venting of frustrations, and good luck with further patches and releases.

 

[Yenzen]

People always value art lower than they appreciate it.

I bought it, because I like adding variety and supporting more unique art in my game.

Nah, I would say that people value art as much as they... actually value it. $8 for a bloody graphical DLC does not add enough value for most people to be willing to buy into it. At that price I expect actual gameplay content or a complete graphical overhaul. It's 20% the price of the base game for crying out loud!

 

[DCyDe]

Thats 2€ at a 75% steam discount, just wait it clearly is overpriced but we will get it eventually for a fair price.