PTS House Editor Crown Prices more reasonable than Live prices

MacCait

I have been using the PTS to test homestead, and am noticing the House Editor crown prices are MUCH more reasonable than the live prices. At first I got excited thinking these were the new prices for items, but looking between them I see that live server prices are incredibly higher...

Some of the prices are the same... For example:

The new tiered dessert boulders, and indeed most boulders are 50 Crowns on both PTS and Live servers...
The huge house-sized vvardenfell Netch Mushrooms are 50 Crowns on both PTS and Live...
etc...

But then other prices are hugely different... For example:

Mundus stones on PTS are 1000 Crowns (approx. £5), while on Live server they are a crazy 4000 Crowns (approx. £20) EACH = Insanity...
Clockwork Iluminator on PTS are 100 Crowns while on Live they are 110 Crowns...
Mushrooms glowing cluster on PTS are 100 crowns, while on live they are 200 Crowns...
Coldharbour Towering Glowstalks are 400 crowns on PTS, but 560 crowns on Live...
Clockwork Illumanator Tower capsule is 400 crowns on PTS, but 560 crowns on Live...
Clockwork standard solitary capsule is 100 crowns on PTS, but are 300 crowns each on Live...

There are litteraly tons of items I do not buy on Live because they are just outrageously priced. Many items are being priced at 4000 crowns each (approx. £20 UK), yet on PTS are just 1000. I believe many of us would buy more items if they were priced more reasonably.

Whats going on with these Live prices?

Can we get a fix on these Live prices to more accurately reflect the more reasonable PTS prices?

Tavore1138

Zo$ don’t share their pricing logic but it often seems like they would rather sell to 10 players at 4k crowns instead of 1,000 players at 400 crowns or 1,000,000 at 40...

I can only assume they have done careful research that shows they are better of selling a few at very high costs and that most people won,t buy even at low prices - because otherwise the pricing does lack an obvious logic especially when they literally only have to make 1 item regardless of how many they sell.

Can understand why there will always be premium items so that those with deeper wallets can get their feels but overall it would seem selling millions of items at somewhat lower prices would net the largest income.

CaffeinatedMayhem

Tavore1138 wrote: »

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Can understand why there will always be premium items so that those with deeper wallets can get their feels but overall it would seem selling millions of items at somewhat lower prices would net the largest income.

This is called the Wal-mart principle in colloquial terms.

Acrolas

PTS is just a template with one fixed price per tier.

white/non-exclusive green: 10 crowns
exclusive green: 50 crowns
blue: 100 crowns
purple: 400 crowns
yellow: 1000 crowns


It was never meant to reflect Live pricing.

Grimm13

Acrolas wrote: »

PTS is just a template with one fixed price per tier.

white/non-exclusive green: 10 crowns
exclusive green: 50 crowns
blue: 100 crowns
purple: 400 crowns
yellow: 1000 crowns


It was never meant to reflect Live pricing.

That may be true, but the point is that these pricing would be much more acceptable for cosmetic items.

MacCait

Grimm13 wrote: »

Acrolas wrote: »

PTS is just a template with one fixed price per tier.

white/non-exclusive green: 10 crowns
exclusive green: 50 crowns
blue: 100 crowns
purple: 400 crowns
yellow: 1000 crowns


It was never meant to reflect Live pricing.

That may be true, but the point is that these pricing would be much more acceptable for cosmetic items.

Totally agree. Very few people at least in the UK can justify spending £20+ on a single item (4000 crowns) to go in an already expensive digital home

heaven13

Wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of tracking to see how many people are buying items on PTS. Stuff that is used more frequently ends up priced higher on live because ZoS knows people want them.

Similar to the 'release on PTS' or 'announce ahead of time' then gauge reactions and price accordingly.

Have the butterflies gone live yet? They were 1000 on PTS and many people said the price was ridiculous. Would love to know if that impacted anything or if they release for even higher.

Danikat

heaven13 wrote: »

Wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of tracking to see how many people are buying items on PTS. Stuff that is used more frequently ends up priced higher on live because ZoS knows people want them.

Similar to the 'release on PTS' or 'announce ahead of time' then gauge reactions and price accordingly.

Have the butterflies gone live yet? They were 1000 on PTS and many people said the price was ridiculous. Would love to know if that impacted anything or if they release for even higher.

I think you're probably right. I know back when housing was first released some of the very cheap, dull materials like planks and stone slabs jumped up in price compared to what they cost on the PTS. Coincidentally only the ones that proved popular with builders wanting to add floors/stairs etc. The less commonly used ones stayed the same price.

Fortunately those are also available for gold relatively cheaply, and even with crowns we're talking a difference of 20 crowns (from 10 to 30), but if you look at it another way it's a 200% increase in price.

TelvanniWizard

Acrolas wrote: »

PTS is just a template with one fixed price per tier.

white/non-exclusive green: 10 crowns
exclusive green: 50 crowns
blue: 100 crowns
purple: 400 crowns
yellow: 1000 crowns


It was never meant to reflect Live pricing.

It´s a shame... The yellow price seems fair to me.

Wayshuba

heaven13 wrote: »

Wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of tracking to see how many people are buying items on PTS. Stuff that is used more frequently ends up priced higher on live because ZoS knows people want them.

Similar to the 'release on PTS' or 'announce ahead of time' then gauge reactions and price accordingly.

Have the butterflies gone live yet? They were 1000 on PTS and many people said the price was ridiculous. Would love to know if that impacted anything or if they release for even higher.

That may be, but if it is they are testing it the wrong way. The item may have the demand it has BECAUSE of the price point. So increasing the price heavily on live means they are driving down that demand.

As an example, let's say Mercedes is going to release a new S-Class (a car which normally sells for around $120k) so they do a test for a month with the price set at $40k. They sell 50 of them. So Mercedes says, "look at the demand, we got this car right!" and goes into wide release at $120k and they sell 5 the first month. Is it that the car now is not desirable... no. It's that the price exceeded the value that a lot of people were willing to pay $40k for but not $120k for.

In this game, the best example is probably the recent pricing of 1 outfit slot - $15. This is a pretty staple item in most MMOs and has a price in other MMOs of usually less than a dollar for one slot and about $3 for an account wide slot. Thus, the value with consumers is pretty standard. But ZoS went hog-wild and set the price out of sight. As a result, the value of that item versus it's price probably caused thousands of slots not to be bought because most players are not seeing the value of a $15 outfit slot. I would contend ZoS lost A LOT of revenue by pricing this so high. Sure, some people have bought them at $15, but I would be willing to bet they would have sold 30-50 TIMES more if they had been a much more reasonable 150-300 Crowns a slot.

If ZoS is seeing something selling well at say 1000 Crowns on PTS, then they go to 4000 Crowns on Live, how many sales did they lose as a result of now overpricing the value. My almost 30 years of marketing experience tells me they probably lost sales in a factor of 10-20 times with the price change. Meaning for every one they sell at 4000, they would have sold 10-20 at 1000. So in the long run, ZoS's current method of CS pricing is costing them more revenue than it is making.