Are we paying more for less? - Page 2

Evil Dave · #11 October 3rd, 2006, 04:05 PM

Quote:

NTJedi said:

The nation and research limits are understandable, but the turn/time limit prevents gamers from enjoying even one good game and prevents seeing everything the demo has to offer.

I agree. I'd rather have a single nation that I could play all the way thru rather than a number of limited ones. This kind of demo has been done before. The Operational Art of War demo had only one scenario (the Korean War), but it could be played all the way thru as either side.

B0rsuk · #12 October 3rd, 2006, 04:06 PM

Can you still fight other nations, even if you can't play as them ?

Speaking of Dominions3 costs... is it really worth it ?

No banks in Poland allow me to pay for Dominions. So I need a paypal account. But I need a special 'e-card' to be to get paypal account. The ecard costs 25 zl/year, about $7.8 .

So it's $55 + $7.8 + shipment cost...

Something for reference. I work 6 hours/day and earn around $331 netto.

Arralen · #13 October 3rd, 2006, 04:19 PM

They're eager to get the demo, because shipping the 300-page manual (with CD included) all over the world does take some time.

Demo could be downloaded and help with waiting for the full game to arrive.

Why there's no download option for the full game has been discussed elsewhere. In short: pirated copies and technical issues.

And concerning the price tag: This has been discussed to death as well. In short: making 5000 or 10000 copies of Dominion3 (or maybe even 25000) is nearly as expensive as making 1.000.000 copies of The Sims. (or was it 15M?). Especially considering the 300 page manual full of content. Thats economics of scale.

And you know what? I have seen (not bought) quite a bunch of "A" titles which come at 45-55� .. and NONE of them delivers the same playablitiy and re-playablity of the Dominions series. Lots of fancy graphics and gourgeous sounds - but no content.

I prefer content.

Theonlystd · #14 October 3rd, 2006, 04:29 PM

Quote:

NTJedi said:

Quote:

Theonlystd said:
I think they do price themselfs out of alot of potential customers..

Poeple see the graphics and such as you said then see a 55 price tag. They'll instantly be turned off..

Very true... it will be the demo which will convince people whether or not it's worth the price. The dominions_2 demo only gave 40_turns hopefully the dominions_3 demo doesn't have the same limitation because many gamers downloading demos will ignore demos with turn limits and time limits.

True the demo will suck in some thats how it got me in dom2... But the demo covers very little of the game 5 EA nations and does it allow you to research up to lvl 9 in the magic? Or severly limited. The demo wont show some of the best parts of the game and is there a turn limit?. And heck alot of poeple just on principle dont pay this much for games no matter what they offer.

On an unrelated note i just ordered meh copy and expressed mailed..

Warhammer · #15 October 3rd, 2006, 04:41 PM

Quote:

Theonlystd said:
And heck alot of poeple just on principle dont pay this much for games no matter what they offer.

That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

Endoperez · #16 October 3rd, 2006, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Warhammer said:That's their loss then. Some people refuse to buy games, or refuse to buy undiscounted games, etc. That is their own decision and you can't reduce the price of your good to appease a small fragment of your customer base.

He is arguing that it is more than just a small fragment of the customer base. There probably are many people who weren't sure about whether they should buy Dominions II or not. The fact that Dominions 3 has a hefty and pricy manual might actually make them even more wary, especially as DomII manual wasn't that great. I hope I never have to decide about marketing. It seems to be very complicated business.

Sindai · #17 October 3rd, 2006, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Talleyrand said:
poor production values

What do you really mean by "production values"? Graphics? If they matter that much more than gameplay to you then Dominions just isn't the game for you.

Unfortuntely that's actually a pretty common sentiment, but there's not much IW can do about it when they only have two or three people. If they actually profit from the game this way then they're way ahead of most of the game industry anyway and there's absolutely no reason for them to change things.

Although it would be pretty awesome if they distributed over Steam like Introversion software instead. Spurning electronic distribution because of piracy is silly; it's not like there aren't easily-accessible copies of Dominions 2 floating around the internet.

Nerfix · #18 October 3rd, 2006, 04:56 PM

I think Dominions 2 is far harder to pirate than a lot of other games.

Endoperez · #19 October 3rd, 2006, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Sindai said:

Quote:

Talleyrand said:
poor production values

What do you really mean by "production values"? Graphics? If they matter that much more than gameplay to you then Dominions just isn't the game for you.

Unfortuntely that's actually a pretty common sentiment, but there's not much IW can do about it when they only have two or three people. If they actually profit from the game this way then they're way ahead of most of the game industry anyway and there's absolutely no reason for them to change things.

Although it would be pretty awesome if they distributed over Steam like Introversion software instead. Spurning electornic distribution because of piracy is silly; there are sites where you can download the full version of Dominions 2 to this day.

I thought that by "poor production values" he meant that there aren't that many people working in the creation of this game, finishing and polishing and squashing tiny bugs. Or that thing I boldened from your reply.

I agree that for fans of the series the game is well worth it. For sometimes-gamers, sunday-afternoon-gods, this mightn't be true. Dominions 3 isn't a cheap game, and that means that some thought must go into buying it. Theonlystd isn't arguing that we who enjoy the game immensely won't buy it at full price; he is saying that many others might buy the game if it was cheaper.

johan osterman · #20 October 3rd, 2006, 05:11 PM

Ultimately it is shrapnel that sets the price. Obviously they are intrested in making as much money as possibly from the sales, they wouldn't price Dominions in the range they do if they didn't figure it would earrn them more than it would for them to sell it at, say, 40. Remember that there is a bit of overhead on this, so a 15 dollar price increase might very well mean that shrapnel can take a 50% drop in sales. At 25 dollars they might conceivable have to sell several times the amount they do at 55, which is unlikely even with that price drop, considering that the complexity and lack of glitz means that dominions will remain a niche game whatever the pricing.