Destiny players can now pay $30 to instantly jump to level 25
Time is money, but is jumping 25 levels in Destiny worth $30?
Just a few hours after we learned Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 would start including microtransactions for its Black Market, Destiny now has a paid level boost available to purchase on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.
The level boost allows Destiny players to instantly level up their Guardian to level 25 for $30. Bungie has made a pack available for each of the three classes in Destiny: Warlock, Hunter, Titan. As of this writing, the current level cap is set at 40.
When Destiny: The Taken King released, a level boost was available so those who were new to the game wouldn’t have to grind to hard to reach its end-game content. The boost was only good as a one-time activity and for only one character. It appears these new level packs to offer the same benefits as the one-time boost did, although for a much higher price.
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Shacknews
replyDaniel Perez posted a new article, Destiny players can now pay $30 to instantly jump to level 25
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it's easier to lower the price later after they get the people that are less price sensitive. I could imagine a weird demand curve for this type of service where most people aren't interested in paying any amount for a boost but the people who are interested don't really care whether it's $5/$10/$20 (ex because they either get the boost and play the game or don't play it at all because time is their constraint, not money). Maybe that's not the case though.
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I don't know if it boosts all 3 subclasses or just one but the description says it includes a subclass boost.
http://i.imgur.com/j26p6Y2.jpg - from reddit
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It would be interesting to see a study on the psychology of player enjoyment when playing content they know they can pay to bypass vs content they can't.
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yeah that would be interesting to see.
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lol
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Can I pay X amount to just unlock all gear and achievements too?
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the negative reaction to this stuff is often oversimplified but the issue is more nuanced. In the abstract, no one should really care if someone has a different value for their time vs their money. The problem is more on the production side and is alluded to in my earlier post in the thread. What does it say about your core gameplay if you're even offering the ability to pay to skip it? Is the design process of your game compromised at all knowing you have this revenue generating mechanism that is at odds with fun gameplay in some ways?
If this is just a way to help friends of disparate levels get on the same page to play together aren't there other solutions (we've seen other games just give you a level boost while playing with your high level friends)?
People understand paying for content. And asking people to pay for content puts the right set of incentives on the production side (content that's worth paying for). When you start asking people to pay to skip your content it raises a lot of strange questions about what exactly you've delivered and what its value is.-
Excellent post
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I fully agree with you, but there's additional nuance here:
- skipping to level 25 here means skipping the "year 1" (i.e. vanilla) content and starting with the Taken King content immediately. the deteriorating value of vanilla content post-expansion is a recurring problem with MMO design and one that's exacerbated here by the generally poor quality of the vanilla story missions compared to the Taken King ones
- anyone buying the "legendary edition" got one of these boosts included in the package, for a single character, so this is just extending that to additional characters for a fee-
yeah that's fair. Certainly WoW is an example where if you just started now with a bunch of expansions it's reasonable to think you now have a bunch of lesser/vanilla content to grind through. Maybe that content actually doesn't stand the test of time and is worth skipping now even though it was once considered good and fun. But if that's the case, should you really charge players to skip that to get to the good stuff they already paid to play? (assuming this is not a F2P game) You could just offer to start them closer to the "present" and not ask them to grind through the past X years of content (even if it's been sped up since its original incarnation like WoW has done). Maybe someone does want to go from start to finish though. It's a delicate balance.
Offering this thing standalone because it was available in a larger bundle makes sense but the original offer still could be called into question for the reasons I first started.-
It's worth mentioning that WoW's doing it basically the same way now. You get a free boost w/ the expansion purchase, and you can buy it for additional characters for additional money. Bungie's not breaking new ground here.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. I definitely like having the option of skipping to the new stuff, but I also think that charging to avoid undesirable content is a dick move.
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I dont but its a slippery slope.
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The WoW example is probably as close to a valid reason there is, and I don't think it applies to Destiny. In WoW, people could buy a max-level character with moderate starting gear, and because they knew nothing about the class they were playing, they'd shit up everything they touched, from raiding to PVP. Having people who have no idea WTF they're doing shitting up the co-op matchmaking would probably suck for those who have a clue.
That said, I haven't played since launch and the level cap's obviously higher, so they'd have 15 levels to figure shit up before they're in your games. So it's probably no big deal. -
I just find the concept of paying to not play a game absolutely hilarious.
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Why pay any money at all? Why the fuck not just make it an option once you've hit that level the first time?
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let's be real here, the marginal cost of applying this upgrade is effectively $0. They're charging this amount because they think there's a market for that trade of time for money. It has nothing to do with COGS.
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yeah I mean obviously it's not actually completely free in the sense that if 1 million new Destiny users come online that does cost them something. But at an individual level the marginal cost of adding a single new user is effectively $0, especially in comparison to $30. Like you said, it is what it is because there's demand for it.
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It can if something is "gated" by experience it means maybe you suck and couldn't get there yourself.
Take example if you give someone level 100 in wow they might not know how to use all their spells or how to even play.
Pay2win
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you can buy emotes, sparrows, event items (festivals), level packs, weapon packs, who knows what they'll saturate that game with next.
the game is trending fast towards user commoditization instead of fueling it with the kind of stuff that really matters which is story, lore, enemies, exploration, things to see, things to do, things to kill, etc etc.
I realize to have expectations we'd get any of the aforementioned drop before 2015 is unrealistic...but to have no idea or time horizon on when we might see that kind of thing for Q1 or Q2 next year sucks ass.
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all of those things you just mentioned are cosmetics and now this. There's not been a weapon pack for sale and haven't sold a level pack since the last DLC last year.
We've had 2 events released under their new model so far, both of which are totally possible (with some cosmetic exceptions) to do without paying a dime of real money.
As for story, lore, things to do... they've said that they have another major event planned for feb/march after a smaller event like the halloween one. It's likely to further the story.
This was all outlined in their weekly update last week.
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They also basically said there will be no more meaningful content for the next year, so...
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No they said the content would be more like the SRL content, which is totally fine by me
I've been fucking loving the racing
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They should offer another option to pay to get the items you really want too.
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Destiny, not even once. (Well maybe once at launch, then COLD MOTHERFUCKING TURKEY!!!)
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