alanschu
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Joined: 12/21/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: bradfordkay
If a person is concerned about paying full pop for a two and half year old game, he should consider the fact that Matrix still has people working on improvements to the game to this day. How many other games are in this situation after two and half years?
When added to the fact that there is no other game with this sort of scope, and you will find that the money is well spent, indeed.
It's actually not THAT uncommon (not to imply that it is common of course), depending on the game of course. Starcraft came out in 1998, and it still receives new updates, and Half-Life received patches for quite some time. Both games are multiplayer (and huge sellers) which would naturally help. Blizzard completely revamped Diablo 2 4 years after release, to provide a much, much more interesting experience and making skills more useful.
I agree somewhat with Feinder, obviously Matrix/2by3 feel that the price is inelastic and won't result in an increase in profit by dropping the price (otherwise they would have already done it).
The funny thing is that I don't necessarily consider myself to be particularly bad with his list.
I'm 25.
I have a full head of hair
I'm in good shape (play basketball and hockey every week)
I assume I have good social skills, but maybe not ;)
I suppose my cave is my bedroom. Not a whole lot of books on WW2, though I've wasted my share of time on Wikipedia.
I am single though.
I am a university student though, so disposable income is not something I particularly have a lot of.
I actually have a fair bit of friends that are WW2 fans, and they're all in the 20-25 range. Games such as the older Close Combat games, as well as Hearts of Iron 2/Doomsday, and Combat Mission are simple enough to play, and can serve as a bit of a Gateway drug into WW2 games. I'm a big Hearts of Iron fan, but the naval warfare model left something to be desired, so I experimented with games like Distant Guns and War in the Pacific, since they'd likely have more in depth naval combat. Distant Guns was a bit of a burn unfortunately, and didn't hold my attention for long. The big hold up for War in the Pacific was the fact that I had no idea how it played. Reading an AAR is nice and all, but you'll always find someone that likes a game, that can write something creative. I was one of the very few that enjoyed Star Wars: Rebellion, and had no problems playing it. Most other people hated it because the interface was poor and the game wasn't really that easy to play.
I'm enjoying my game as the Allies so far, but the AI does erratic things. I'm also not sure how open I am to PBEM, since sometimes annoying things like school take up a large chunk of my time, so it's not really that fair to other players. It's easier to do when I know the person and am friends with them, but they're hesitant to buy the game, so that's not an option at this time. I was very sucked into the game at first, and loved hunting down the submarines near Pearl Harbour at the beginning, but with the AI being rather poor, it's starting to lose some steam unfortunately. It's a bit anti-climactic when the Japanese AI sends his carriers by my airfield in Amboina (that has already sunk numerous IJN ships) and watch me sink two of his carriers in August 1942 (accounting for the 4th and 5th carrier I have sunk so far, from LBA. Two CV from Amboina, two CVL from Java, and 1 CVE from Palemberg). I just hit January 1st, 1943, and I have sunk 700 ships to them sinking 150, destroyed over 6500 planes, to my 3000, and have a 3000 point lead in victory points. And this was with me learning the game to start (dove right in, since I figured my newbie skills would accurately mimic the Allies doing poorly to start the war off. The Japanese insist on sending submarine after submarine off the coast of Townsville, letting me quickly rack up kills (and experience) for my bombers and patrol craft in the area. As a result, the campaign is starting to drag a bit. I'm stubborn and there's still something fun about hitting an AK with 18 bomb hits from a huge wing of Dauntless from the CV Hornet and CV Wasp (put together on purpose of course). But it seems the only thing I have to be careful of with my carriers to getting them too close to LBA, since there doesn't seem to be much of a threat at sea any more. Just raiding convoy lanes to cut off supplies to the islands and Atolls. Burma is still fun, as I'm still learning ground combat.
I guess I'm just curious if there are "wannabe" grognards out there that haven't quite made the plunge. All the WW2 fans I know in person are all around my age. I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a Grognard (since there's not many genres of games that I don't play. If the game is fun, it's fun, regardless of RTS, FPS, TBS, ROFLTUNASANDWICH). I'd rather the genre not completely disappear when I get older because the main market of grognards has passed away.
Telling someone that the game is "cheap" because it lasts a long time and you can play it for a while isn't that convincing, because the only reason you've played it for so long is because you enjoyed it. But everybody is different. I still find fun in blowing up IJN ships, even though the war against the AI already seems to be pretty much over and it's just a matter of time and dealing with the trouble of setting up invasions, but someone else that's interested in the subject matter, that may not necessarily like some aspects of the game and puts the game on the shelf early, gets burned. Yes this can happen in all cases (and has happened to me), but I'd rather rationalize my being 'burned' because I was impatient and couldn't be bothered to wait for the game price to drop. But at the same time, I'm very happy that I waited for Far Cry to be $20 before buying it. I don't think it was worth $60, but I enjoyed it for it's $20 value, and was willing to purchase it. Had they not dropped the price, I would not have bought the game. Had War in the Pacific not been on sale, I would not have bought the game (Had War in the Pacific had a demo so I could see how the game played, I would have bought the game a long time ago). But saying that "it's worth it" is a bizarre rationalization, simply because the game can be played for a long time. I used my copy of Half-Life for upwards of 4 years. So using that rationalization, Half-Life is a better value than War in the Pacific. But I have a feeling that there are some of you on this board that would disagree, correct? Starcraft is still played by people 8 years after its release, and it is still being patched, but how many people here would consider it a better value than War in the Pacific (for the record I prefer WitP over Starcraft. The game, while good, didn't appeal to me)?
As stated, the price is obviously seen by Matrix and perhaps 2by3 as being inelastic, I guess I'm just not necessarily convinced.
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RE: Why so expensive? - 
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