Unfortunately, when you compare the value of similar content to most other fighting games on the market, this feels much closer to the latter. I have no problem supporting the game, as I appreciate the model, have bought every season Ultra pack so far, and also the DE, but the pricing here feels excessive.
For some concrete comparison, a 5-pack of colors (including a gold one) for a character in Xrd is $1. A 3-pack of completely new modeled alternate outfits (not just recolored textures) with two colors each in MKX are $4 for three. Iād expect something closer to $3 at most for an alternate color pack, which these essentially are. I realize every game has a different model, and perhaps there are some hidden costs here in keeping development going, but weāll never know or be told any of that. So as a customer, itās not unreasonable to weigh the value to similar products on the face value of the content/price alone.
Real-money only purchases also devalues KI Gold, so I donāt blame people for being frustrated with that aspect too.
Well, yes and no though. It was before, but now itās also a daily reward. I have about 1,200 in KI Gold right now just from saving up daily rewards. By my count, you get 450 KI Gold every 9 days. So roughly once a month, you have enough to get the most expensive mimic or shadow skin, if Iām not mistaken, without having to actually pay real money.
So if they spend the time and money to make new content like these skins, how do they make sure they actually get paid and people donāt just sit on their free KI gold until they have enough? You canāt make them prohibitively expensive in terms of KI Gold to force people out of gold hoarding and in to buying mode, otherwise the people wanting them immediately will say āhow on Earth are you charging $15 for a couple of colors!?ā or whatever they decide to charge.
I agree, the waters are muddied. As soon as you start offering your in game currency for free, you run in to the issue of how do you make sure you get paid for something you need to get paid for? But that also leads to fans asking āwhy can I buy this item with the currency I purchased, but not that item?ā
Itās not an easy question for either side. Personally, I love that they offer KI Gold as a daily reward. I think Iāve made a grand total of a little over 100,000 shadow points in the last month since I first created my crappy little Sadira shadow and if I spent 75K of that on one measly Jago shadow skin, I donāt think Iād feel all that great about it, so for me, the free KI gold definitely helps make the grind feel at least slightly less punitive, and thatās something.
I canāt fault your logic here. Like I said, I enjoy the fact that theyāre giving away a small amount of KI Gold for free, but yeah, when you pay money for it, you kinda feel like you should be able to buy anything with it. I can respect that.
I think itās a tough needle to thread. You pay for currency, you should be able to buy anything. They create content, they have every right to want to be paid for it. You take that currency and you make it both free and still cost money, it helps people buy stuff in game, but it also hurts their ability to get paid for certain things. You gate those things off, you tell people that paid money for currency that your moneyās no good and you have to spend more money.
Yikes. Again, Iām trying to see a better solution than what we have now and I canāt think of anything beyond gating off KI Gold again and lowering the grind everywhere, but that adversely effects the people that really enjoy the grind and it lowers the time on long term rewards, so that solution isnāt without its downsides either. You could have a second form of currency that can be purchased that can buy anything and everything, but that just makes things sound more convoluted, especially when you already have shadow points for buying shadow skins, astral energy and astral gems to do stuff in shadow lords, and KI gold.
There has to be a compromise somewhere. To me, that compromise is that thereās plenty of stuff you can buy in the game with KI Gold. I think they should be compensated for their efforts to give us something that we asked for outside of a season. But maybe @SirRadG has the right of it below:
I also tend to think that colors and skins for $5 is a bit excessive. If they want people to pay real money outside of the KI Gold system, which is both real money and a free daily reward now, I think they could at least lower their asking price a little. I want to help support this game, as Iāve purchased KI Gold multiple times in addition to buying the ultra packs for all three seasons and donating to the community fund.
I know those things donāt entitle me to anything beyond what I paid for and Iām not trying to imply that they do. Iām just trying to illustrate the point that I DO want to support the game. But also want to pay fair prices and $5 seems a bit much here. Iāve purchased both gold packs and the terror pack, so now Iāve basically paid half the price of season 3, if Iām not mistaken, for nine colors.
My choice, of course. But in terms of value, that seems a bit iffy.
Itās situations like this that me glad that I donāt spend money on in game currency in any game, I always prefer to unlock what I can for free on my own and buy only the things that cannot be unlocked freely.
While I do support and understand the while KI gold thing. The prices are on the high side because they are new. I will bet that once they all are released that there will be a way to buy all of them at a discount. This is what I am waiting for.
Maybe you could have used KI gold, if they didnāt start putting it the daily rewards, then we could have used it to buy gold packs and other skins.
I think that this is an unfortunate result of the insane amount of KI gold they gave out with the ultra editionāgoing on what itās priced at in the ingame store, I have over 300 dollars worth of KI gold right now. I doubt Iāll ever run out.
If there were more good uses for KI gold aside from turning on easy mode in shadow lords and unlocking accessories youāre too impatient to get through progression, it might not sting as much that the skins are real money only.
No one told them to offer their in-game currency as a daily giveaway though - that was their choice, and doesnāt change the fact that the currency when purchased was billed as a way to buy in-game content. Now that there is in-game content that is specifically gated to not be purchasable with KI Gold, I feel that they are trying to double dip and I wonāt support it.
I get it. The KI Gold from the Shadow Jago fund and S3 Ultra release are sunk costs, and the suits are probably loath to provide objectively new content and have people just buy it with some pseudo-currency that doesnāt affect the here-and-now bottom line. Again, Iām not angry at the attempt - the purpose of the company is to make money, and this is probably a good way to do it. But neither am I obligated to condone with my wallet a business practice that I donāt agree with.
The price of the skin packs doesnāt actually bother me. Iām at a point in my life where a $5 pack of nonsense accessories for a videogame is about the same as a $2 or $3 pack of nonsense accessories for a videogame. If they charged me $5 in KI Gold for the packs and Iād run out, Iād happily purchase $5 worth of KI Gold and buy myself some new skins. But I wonāt support the model of āyour purchasable in-game currency [that heretofore has had a direct exchange rate with real money] now only works for x, y, and z itemsā. I wish them success in the rollout of these skins, but I wonāt contribute to what I feel is an unsavory business model.
The sad part is they will probably never directly answer this question either about ki gold. @rukizzel got anything to say on the devaluation of KI gold.
Just as a note, I also donāt support tagging the devs every time we disagree with a business (or even gameplay) decision that gets made. The devs have shown many, many times that they actively browse the forum and its various topics, and I think pinging them all the time isnāt a good way to repay their incredible level of engagement with the community.
Business decisions get made; oftentimes, those decisions probably come from people higher on the food chain than our gracious hosts here on the forums. Haranguing them (in general, not necessarily directed at you) about decisions that get made 2 or 3 levels above them isnāt going to solve anything either.
The worst part about this is the devs and everyone were saying you better buy KI Season 3 by pre ordering or on day 1 in order to get the huge KI Gold bonus. āYouāre going to need it for later on in the season.ā Had I known they would still not let you buy things in game with KI gold I would have never pre ordered. I feel so cheated on that front.
Funny you mention that: Iāve actually gotten kinda paranoid about tagging devs. Iām frightened by the possibility that Iāve wound up on some sort of developer blacklist because I pinged them too liberally when I first found the pinging feature
So now I only use it as a point of reference, like if Iām using something they said as evidence for a theory or argument, and even then itās usually equipped with the quote itself.
Even if there are things that Iād want to discuss with them, Iām gonna go ahead and keep it to forum posts that they may or may not read.
Iād get back on topic but Iām a bit too tired to check and remember what the topic is.
I thought this skin was already out for Mira didnāt she have that joker face already??? We didnāt pay for the Christmas costumes did we? Or did we? I might have forgotten.
You should be able to use your goldā¦ This is why we brought the ultimate edition and was given gold no?
Kis structure and delivery is a complete mess at the moment. No idea why this has been dropped now.
Shouldnāt this have come for Halloween?? Like overwatch terror pack or Halloween pack did? Maybe Christmas should have been lighter more hero based or even snow combat armour?
Iām buying them like everything elss to support that game but come on MS if there is something thatās NOT lacking in this game itās skins and colours!!! If you going to work on them then at least changs the costumes a together like overwatch has.
Terror packs are color skins like mimic/shadow or they are another set of items that you can costumize with other items? or is a different costume like the new one that thunder got?
Sometimes I give up with this community. I agree with the pricing and gold but complaining that itās stuff with donāt want/need. Then in other threads asking why were not getting them?
To be fair this is what was on the pricing announcement FAQ:
What can the KI Gold which comes with the Ultra Edition be used for?
KI Gold can be used to unlock accessories, customization colors for fighters, Retro Costumes, Profile customization, and XP Boosters.
&
Is there anything available for me to spend my KI Gold on this season if I already have unlocked all the current, available items?
Yes, there will be.
Awesome, what can you tell me about it?
ā¦stay tunedā¦
They havenāt really broken any promises. Itās just a weird disconnect now with content that doesnāt work with in-game currency. I could see how that might irk people as the Gold bonus was an incentive to purchase it. To me the KI Gold I got when I bought it seems completely useless to me, as Iād rather not use it on something I can earn, the KI Gold item pricing in-game is a pretty bad value in terms of the content it unlocks based on the KI Gold monetary conversion, and I donāt want to spend any yet not knowing whatās coming that it could be used for.
Hahaha, while I agree Blizzard makes great costumes and Iād love to see that type of quality in KI something tells me the budgets between the two games are vastly different from one another.
