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On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it.
Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff.
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pretty much. it took companies a long time to realize that the 99%/1% dichotomy is insanely profitable if you have a massive playerbase because then that 1% isnt insignificant.
referring to the thing where 99% of people will pay nothing or an average amount of money...and then a 1% will spend an insane amount of money on your game when there is no cap on it like a monthly subscription or just straight up buying a game for like 60 dollars.
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Baa?21248 Posts
On September 01 2015 03:02 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it. Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff.
No Riot made over $1 billion in revenue last year (by a third party estimate which may or may not be accurate), which means actual profits were probably a low double digit percentage of that at best.
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Yea people always completely ignore that even the players who don't pay anything still bring value cuz the bigger population number attracts even more people to play it.
I still don't get why riot hasn't added the betting+drops from csgo. That shit is the main reason csgo arguably the biggest esport in the west.
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On September 01 2015 03:09 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 03:02 Gahlo wrote:On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it. Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff. No Riot made over $1 billion in revenue last year (by a third party estimate which may or may not be accurate), which means actual profits were probably a low double digit percentage of that at best.
I never said it was profit or revenue.
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On September 01 2015 03:06 VayneAuthority wrote:
pretty much. it took companies a long time to realize that the 99%/1% dichotomy is insanely profitable if you have a massive playerbase because then that 1% isnt insignificant.
referring to the thing where 99% of people will pay nothing or an average amount of money...and then a 1% will spend an insane amount of money on your game when there is no cap on it like a monthly subscription or just straight up buying a game for like 60 dollars.
The biggest strength for an online game is that players themselves are content for the game. Keeping a large, healthy player base means better content overall.
This is why f2p mmo games are the way to go (using mmo to not specifically refer to RPG here)
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You know what I miss?
When this game used to have lore beyond character backgrounds. Why did they have to cut the League? Are they ever going to replace it with some sort of overarching story? I really hope so 
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On September 01 2015 03:02 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it. Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff.
The EA guy is probably a fool, at least with their current model. I think the skin market is saturated in that users are not going to buy at a significantly higher rate if Riot doubles its skin output. They also cant really go back to the 2013 model of champ releases because they already have so many it would actually be counterproductive. They really need to open up other revenue streams, and through things that people want to microtransact in. RP betting on ESports is an obvious option, opening another title is one they should have done 2 years ago.
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That's what they do with wards and profile icons (generic or team flairs), etc.
And yeah the EA guy was an idiot who basically said "These guys are obviously business newbies because they don't realise how much more they could be milking their players. That's lack of experience and they're lucky they're successful... for now." Because treating LoL same as the latest CoD installment wouldn't have impeded its growth and instead been a boon on the long term.
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On September 01 2015 03:02 Gahlo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it. Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff.
I think Dota 2's monetization is less oppressive. You don't need to buy champs, there's no IP, and you can only buy skin accessories. A full set is roughly the same price or less than a LoL skin, but you have the choice to mix and match. If Dota 2 is making more money than LoL, per user, their monetization is basically better in every way. Valve also takes a cut of everything sold on the Marketplace.
I also want to note, I think the way LoL introduces champions to new players through free weeks is superior to Dota 2's method of giving everyone all the champs from the start. It allows players to learn the game slowly and learn a few champions thoroughly. But I guess in Dota 2 you have to give all the heroes in the game for free due to the hard counter nature of the game? That's what I've heard at least. In any event, the free week introduction of champs is a positive byproduct of Riot's monetization plan.
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Baa?21248 Posts
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it.
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On September 01 2015 04:00 Alaric wrote:
That's what they do with wards and profile icons (generic or team flairs), etc.
And yeah the EA guy was an idiot who basically said "These guys are obviously business newbies because they don't realise how much more they could be milking their players. That's lack of experience and they're lucky they're successful... for now." Because treating LoL same as the latest CoD installment wouldn't have impeded its growth and instead been a boon on the long term.
I really dont think those are another revenue stream. Those are more like just releasing extra skins, and serve as a different cosmetic option. I doubt many $0 players were enticed to buy them, and I also think people who bought them more often than not did so in lieu of buying a skin.
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On September 01 2015 04:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it.
I'm pretty far out of the loop and have been for a few years, but iirc lots of game developers being published by EA were hating them / predicting industry crash / etc. Did something change?
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On September 01 2015 05:34 TheHumanSensation wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 04:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it. I'm pretty far out of the loop and have been for a few years, but iirc lots of game developers being published by EA were hating them / predicting industry crash / etc. Did something change?
Being well liked != being successful
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On September 01 2015 04:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it.
So are Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, doesn't mean we should emulate them.
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On September 01 2015 05:38 Mikau wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 04:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it. So are Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, doesn't mean we should emulate them.
I don't know EA's entire game profile, but they make the FIFA games and do it very well, a lot of their Star Wars games have been great, and my GF loves the Sims. These all seem like things that people should try to emulate in how the games almost always improve year to year and often end up incorporating things the consumers actually want. It looks like they have some shitter, like Spore which should have been cool, but even Blizzard released D3 in the state that game was released.
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On September 01 2015 04:08 Sonnington wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 03:02 Gahlo wrote:On September 01 2015 02:26 Sonnington wrote:On September 01 2015 01:27 Sufficiency wrote:On September 01 2015 00:47 Sonnington wrote:On August 31 2015 23:54 Sufficiency wrote:On August 31 2015 01:01 Sonnington wrote:
I was wrong, runes are only 515, 1025, and 2050.
To play devils advocate, Riot's system isn't overly unfair. You don't need to buy all the champions to be competitive in ranked. In fact, a lot of people only play a handful of champs in ranked to get to high positions. So the IP grind just encourages people to spend real money in order for Riot to continue operations. So, in that respect, it's not totally unfair.
You could argue Dota 2 does it better by only offering cosmetic upgrades. Which is a fair point to make. They apparently also make more money per user on average. I think it's too late for Riot to go with an accessory skin system though. I have said this in various places and I will try this again: dota2 is not even remotely comparable to LoL because Valve is a completely different beast. Comparing dota2 monetization to LoL's is extremely unfair. Valve is more of a publisher than developer these days; they don't have to rely on dota2 to survive. In fact, Valve probably does not mind losing money on dota2 since to play dota2 you need to install Steam - which is basically advertisement for their platform (what do you see when you go into Steam? Oh yeah, a bunch of games Valve wants you to buy). Riot has only one game and needs to make income from itself. Nothing is free in this world and Riot does need to maintain profitable to pay its employees and keep the servers running. Those are fair points to make. Are you sure Valve loses money on Dota 2? I read an article where Dota 2 makes -more- money per user than LoL. Revenue per user is probably not the representative figure since it does not factor in the overheads which are independent of the servers. Also there are far fewer dota2 players. My point is that profitability from dota2 is probably not Valve's top priority since its a Steam exclusive and the game by itself can be seen as marketing cost for Valve. Those are all fair points to make, but they're coming off as counter points to Dota 2 having a better monitezation plan to LoL. I don't really think a large factor of boosting the revenue per user can be attributed to Valve spending more money on their engine and bug testing. I don't think that encourages players to buy accessories to make their Queen of Pain sexier or their Axe more badass looking. @Ansibled Yes they fixed it. Well, yeah, a guy from EA came out publicly and said that Riot could be making a fuckton more off of their players and Riot basically shrugged and said "Yeah, but that's not the point." They still made $1billion+ last year. The more oppressive the monetization becomes in League the more likely players are to leave for games that have more free stuff. I think Dota 2's monetization is less oppressive. You don't need to buy champs, there's no IP, and you can only buy skin accessories. A full set is roughly the same price or less than a LoL skin, but you have the choice to mix and match. If Dota 2 is making more money than LoL, per user, their monetization is basically better in every way. Valve also takes a cut of everything sold on the Marketplace.
In my experience a full set of dota 2 hero accessories that I actually wanted frequently cost less than $1. Occasionally there would be one piece that I was interested in which cost more than $1 because it had special particles or w/e. I think the quality is also lower though. Many of the heroes only have pathetic cosmetic options whereas nearly every LoL champ I own has a skin that I would buy if I had the money.
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I know newcomers were really put off during TI5 though because the cosmetics made the models so different for some of them that they woudn't recognise the same hero between two games.
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On September 01 2015 05:38 Mikau wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 04:49 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
EA is much more competent at running a business than Riot is, though. The only people who hate EA are hardcore gamers who post about this kind of shit on forums. By any real and quantifiable metric of business success and sustainability, EA is absolutely killing it. So are Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, doesn't mean we should emulate them.
or give a fuck about their opinions on anything, except perhaps to do the opposite.
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EPT
