Ok i never said they should charge any exact amount i only said that i would pay 14.99
But anything for a troll right?
The fact is some would spend it and others may not. So what spend game gold if such an option would exist.
The players that like the game would buy it and tight wads that think 10 or 15 bucks is a small fortune obviously would not.
That is exactly why the option to buy with gold was added into the idea
C.O.D. made alot of money off maps.... why on earth would bioware want to do that?
You missed the point. Maps divides the player base. This is bad on every level.
They want to increase their Platinum sales a thousand fold? They just need to replace the RNG system by a real store where you can actually buy weapons, armors, accessories, badges, banners, titles, etc. In either Platinum or Gold
at a reasonable price (0.50$ to 5$ depending on the type).
THAT will skyrocket their sales beyond their imagination without ever dividing the player base.
Here's something I posted a while ago on the subject:
After playing ME3MP and DAMP, I feel like the RNG system is simply wasted.
Give me an in-game store where I can buy specific items with gold. Set the price to something fair and I'll spend a good chunk of real life money on it to save myself some time. And I'm not alone. I'll play the damn game over 500 hours allright, I just don't want to spend my time hoping I get a reward for my efforts...
The current DAMP system is abysmal, the duplicates, the absence of progression and the RNG makes it about the worst combination you can get. No matter how much time you play this game, you're never 100% sure to be rewarded for your efforts. It's like a core mechanic of all games, effort translates to reward... It's amazing they're still supporting this.
The ME3MP system wasn't perfect but much better. The only problem with it was the RNG, but at least duplicates served their purpose and once you maxed a weapon/item you'd never get it again.
There are some noteworthy benefits from using a simple in-game store with no RNG at all:
- RNG is simply just frustrating. Why would you want to infuriate your customer? How do you expect them to behave themselves on your forums if all they have is anger toward your company?
- With a fair price (gold per time spent on the game), you'll get a pretty good influx of cash from normal people that wouldn't spend a dime on RNG.
- When they design an item, they'll have to actually make it worth it, otherwise we'll just skip it in the store.
- Overall balance on skills and enemies should be much better because if one thing is better/easier than the others, then people will flock to the items associated with it, leaving all the other choices unprofitable.
There are some caveats to using such a store system (non RNG)- It will reduce the revenue from "Whales", people that spend thousands of real dollars on the game, but I'm pretty sure that it can be compensated by normal people spending on the game if the price is fair. Whales are just as frustrated as we are with the RNG, they just have more cash to burn than us. Less frustration is always good... especially from what could be argued your most "loyal" fan base.
- Developers will actually have to work on balance, they'll have to create items that are worth it. In simple words, they'll have to work... which shouldn't be a bad thing if you think about it.
I know it's a pipe dream, EA/Bioware will never allow this, but you can't blame a man to dream 
Instead of going for a full leveled Sulivan from the start, you could have got it at level 1 and be able to upgrade it to level 2, then 3, up to level 23 if needed. ME3MP had this kind of system in place and it worked for 1 good reason: Most of the weapons were perfectly viable at level 1. This means that the only "required" thing was to actually get the weapon once, after that it was just gravy on top of it...
The real frustration from ME3MP was that sometimes the store wouldn't give you that freaking level 1 weapon you wanted. A store would easily allow you to unlock that elusive level 1, then you could either buy the other levels, grind them in-game or a combination of the two. The good thing would be that it's optional, people that wanna spend hundreds of dollars could, people that don't mind spending 20$ to unlock 20 weapons wouldn't feel so trolled...
The key here is "fair price". You need to make it accessible, something you don't think twice before spending on it. The first thing you mentioned is real money, but I think that's the problem. It has to be in in-game gold. Real money should only reflect a value in gold and that value should be determined by hours played.
Let's say the system is based on maxing your manifest around 200 hours on the highest difficulty and a game last 25 minutes. That means you play an average of 2 matches per hour, about 10 minutes in the menus, loading sessions and such. Let's say we value each hour at 2$. This means each match should net you about 1$ in gold value.
Now all you need to do is to fill those 200 hours with items at 1$ per level (10 to 20 levels each -> 10$ to 20$), 3$ per level for ultra-rares (10 to 20 levels each -> 30$ to 60$) and a flat 5$ for one-time unlocks like characters.
If we keep ultra-rares numbers at a 1:4 ratio (1 UR for every 4 commons = 5 items), launch with a total of 15 items and 10 characters, that means we could unlock everything for either 68$ (10 x 5$/character + 12 x 1$/common + 3 x 2$/ultra-rare) or 34 hours of playtime. To max everything at level 20, you would need to either pay 470$ (10 x 5$/character + 12 x 1$/common x 20 levels + 3 x 2$/ultra-rare x 20 levels) or play 235 hours. Those are far from being unreasonable numbers.
And this is with a very low amount of items. Adding 2 or 3 items a month shouldn't be a problem and would keep a steady stream of revenue while adding new things for players to work toward. Making items cost such a low value is key in getting a lot of people to pay you extra money just because they want to unlock that specific item right now. People will gladly pay 1$ or 2$ to avoid waiting or work for it. The low cost allows you to perceive it as if it was "nothing" but it adds up nicely at the end of the month...
Progression shouldn't be based only on items either. One thing DAMP really failed at is to base its challenge system almost completely on promotions only. When you finish a challenge in DAMP, it's over, there's no do over so all that's left is grinding promotions. In ME3MP, you could redo the challenges, I did the Biotic God challenge 64 times! That kept me going much more than any item. Not so much in DAMP and it's a real shame because the current system only shows how "diversified" you played and how many promotions you got, it has nothing to do with how much you played or excelled at the game.
See, it's possible to have a store and a progression system that doesn't necessarily punish players. It's even easy to do so, yet companies still believe all they need is to shove RNG down our throats and pray the "whales" spend enough money to give them a nice profit margin. I would honestly spend over 50$ in real cash if I was rewarded for it, maybe more if I spent that much time in game...
I would like to add this would also force Bioware to innovate and deliver constantly new content. This would be absolutely a blast for both the players and Bioware because the longer they can keep getting profit, the longer we can keep having fun, win-win if you ask me.
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