Gearbox, your Platinum currency is an overpriced, convoluted currency exchange system & I refuse to use it

[Halisi]

Lftstrafe Battleborn already broke it down that Skins cost ~$3.80 under this currency exchange which is not directly purchasable, while taunts cost $2; you can directly purchase enough platinum to buy 1 for $1.99, or 3 for 4.99. And now I’m going to further break it down; there are 26 battleborn, if you want to buy 1 “tier 2” skin for each BB you would have to buy $60 worth of platinum, that is $49.99 for 9300 Platinum, & $9.99 for 1625 Platinum for a total of 10925p, 25p more than you need. I’m not going to pay $60, money I could use to buy a full game, for retextures; this doesn’t even include taunts or tier 3 skins which we already expect to cost real money.

Under this system you are essentially buying 1 skin for $5, & for another $5 you can get 3 skins but in total that sets you back $10 for 3 retexture skins. This is ridiculous considering that everyone playing battleborn has paid the equivalent of $60usd, $80usd, $74usd, or $94usd for battleborn or the battleborn digital deluxe edition, and the season pass.

Skin: $1
Taunt: $.50

$1 = 100 platinum
$5 = 500 platinum
$10 = 1000 platinum
$20 = 2000 platinum
$50 = 5000 platinum

This is how you get my money; clear, reasonable prices. Under this conversion rate I could buy; 2 taunts for $1, a skin for $1, 5 skins for $5, 10 taunts for $5, and 1 skin for every battleborn for $26. With this players would feel comfortable buying platinum to get a few skins or taunts & wouldn’t have buyer’s remorse for not getting enough content for the money spent (remember only 3 skins for $10). Plus buying more would be even more enticing to the player; the player can easily assign a value to a certain amount of platinum. In this conversion $5 looks like a couple of skins and or taunts; while in your conversion the same amount of money looks like a, skin and a, taunt, or 3 taunts and thats if they decide to do the math otherwise they won’t assign the value at all.

Battleborn is a great game but I will not support this poorly done microtransaction system.

This video explains the issue pretty well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U) and if you want to learn more go into their channel and search for “microtranaction” for two more videos on the subject.

TL;DR Do not buy Platinum until Gearbox decides to reign in the costs of these retextures & taunts, it is overpriced, convoluted, unclear, and poorly done. This is the only way to make them change it.

[Ganjamira (Rick is my Spirit Animal)]

Yeah, I dislike mostly the uneven Platinum-pack-sizes, its always leaving a useless tiny sum of Platinum if you purchase a skin & taunt.
As broke person I can´t argue the prices, any price it out of league just now, but I hate such tweaks producing leftover minor amounts of currency…

[Nick_Infidel]

Or just buy skins taunts that you want for the characters you enjoy the most. Or don’t buy anything at all. It won’t affect anything. I doubt anyone else will even care if you buy/don’t buy.

[Misguided]

It cracks me up when people talk about the money it would take to buy every skin for every character (or even one for each) then use that as validation that stuff is too expensive. That’s not the intent. Go take a look at League, which has hundreds, some of which cost in excess of twenty dollars (and yes it is free to play, but when you are talking thousands of dollars, is the initial 60 still relevant? And yes, I know those skins are almost the equivalentt of new characters).

These are vanity items, and premium ones at that. As @Nick_Infidel said, if there’s a skin you love for a favorite character, go for it. Otherwise, don’t bother.

[rush86]

Wait, whos forcing to spend money on skins? No one, so why does it matter at all? Its something that’s completely optional.

[maskerader]

[quote=“Halisi, post:1, topic:1514973”]Skin: $1
Taunt: $.50
$1 = 100 platinum
$5 = 500 platinum
$10 = 1000 platinum
$20 = 2000 platinum
$50 = 5000 platinum[/quote]
Can’t agree more. Clear, straightforward pricing.

[Rathborn (Rathborn/Maze)]

Going to agree with @misguided here. $5 for a skin and a taunt seems very reasonable to me. Let’s use League of Legends as an example (I don’t currently play it so I apologize if any of this is not current info). And yes I realize LoL is free to play, and I believe their skins can be unlocked without real money. I am looking at it as an example of a pricing system that has been successful for Riot.

Here’s how Riot breaks down their skins- https://support.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/201752874-Guide-to-Skin-Price-Tiers

According to this a basic skin is either 390 or 520 riot points. There are lots of other types but let’s use this for comparison. According to Amazon a $10 card will give you 1380 riot points. That means for $10 you could purchase 3 of the skins that cost 390 points or 2 of the 520 with some points left. Or a combination of 2 at 320 and 1 at 520. You get the idea. And if you look at the tiers the better skins quickly go up in price.

Battleborn players will be able to purchase a skin for 420 Platinum. According to the official post here- https://battleborn.com/en/news/view/en-the-vision-for-battleborns-in-game-marketplace/ . $10 will buy you 1625 Platinum. That’s 3 skins with a few points left over. A taunt comes in at 230 Platinum.

I hope this information will help others form there opinions with a little more information to draw from. And remember, as far as we know, what will be available will all purely cosmetic.

[Tenebeat]

Well, I think they should get rid off the premium currency as a whole and just make people pay up straight without having to buy some shady ig currency first, but I agree, if they really want to milk me, then they should make it a little cheaper so I won’t feel like I should rather spend the money on my medication than on pixels lmao

[wisecarver]

Just for the record I’m a fan of this game but care none the less about skins at all.

[timtoborne (The Art of the Foxtrot)]

You’re a cheap date, at least make Gearbox buy you dinner, eh? xD

[AttnDefDis]

I couldn’t agree more. The pricing is absurd, but more importantly, the convoluted system is a huge turn off.

I really hope this fails hard and they rethink it. The playerbase is not large. So, milking the loyal people like this is really ■■■■■■ up, in my opinion.

[Xelaris96 (ThisWasAMistake)]

Okay…then don’t use it lol

[lmoore0621 (F5 BlackBearD)]

Agrees with this guy too. It seems like a lot of players that aren’t familiar with MOBAs are the ones that are complaining. All of these add-on that gearbox are implementing is no surprise, WHY?

Well as a person who literally ONLY play MOBAS besides from nba 2k games I get every year, This is what MOBAS do. This isn’t COD or Halo, not to mention NOBODY IS FORCING YOU GUYS TO BUY THIS CRAP. There simple addons that’s it, the only way this would be an issue is if they forced you to pay cash for new characters as that is game changing but no you can get new characters for free so that isn’t an issue.

Guys all im saying is that remember the type of genre your playing. I know this game has a lot of players from other shooters that got attracted to this game… GREAT

but now get with the program, buying skins, taunts and voice packs are in EVERY MOBA game out and honestly im surprised this didn’t come with the game on launch. All I see is complaints and these complaints are mostly things that EVERY MOBA has implemented so this is nothing new.

The issue with most of these complaints is simply the lack of knowledge and experience for the MOBA genre. You guys are acting like not having these skins and taunts will change the gameplay lol. Ill be buying some of these addons, this is something im used to doing since my 7 years of playing MOBA.

[Last note, most MOBAS are F2P, that being said yes I was one of those players that paid $75 on this game and it sucks that the game is already at $30 on amazon but hey, I get why the price dropped. out this whole post I will agree that this game should of been F2P. Gearbox would of made more money if this game was F2P and there would be a much higher fan base]

[Accursius13]

It sucks that they aren’t part of the in game currency, but hey I don’t have to pay anything and I am not being forced to do so.

The biggest issue here is that we as Gamers keep allowing companies to do this to us, after all we are the consumer and without our hard earned cash they can’t be successful. Everything starts off slowly but eventually our console gaming is going to turn into mobile gaming, were everything will have a paywall behind it.

I’m not sure if anyone remebers but it started off like this:

• Before beta: The game will have no micro-transactions.
• Around beta: Oh we are adding transaction but only for cosmetics ( never clear on if it was T2 or T3 at the time)
• Around Alani’s release: We wanted to release T2 but got held back because of marketing issues. (which turns out it was just a held back so they can add platinum currency)
• Just this week: As some people saw early Monday, there was a leak that happened that showed the platinum currency show up in some people game and there it was, Platinum for loadouts, Bank space and XP boost:
  

I know people don’t mind all this since you don’t have to buy anything. all Moba’s do this but most of those you didn’t have to pay 60-95 ( not sure how much australians have to pay but i know they have it worse). This is them just putting their foot in the door.

[phoreverphamily (Musicopia)]

It’s just the fact that the tier 2 skins appeared in the beta, making people believe they were part of the base game. Myself, atleast, was only under the impression we would have to pay for tier 3 skins that actually change the model. Not just a little fancier recolors… If GBX knew about this market plan why were they so hush hush when there were countless threads asking about the tier 2 skins.

I won’t be buying anything other than tier 3 skins. If anything at all

[fri (Nitpick Rank 100)]

Yeah, I dislike mostly the uneven Platinum-pack-sizes, its always leaving a useless tiny sum of Platinum if you purchase a skin & taunt.

This is intended. The amounts are specifically crafted to ensure you always have some platinum left over.

This makes you think “man, I hate how I have 200 coins to spare, let’s buy more so that it’s not wasted”.

And this works on some people. If it didn’t then it wouldn’t be made this way.

[jmorales20]

I would prefer a more 1 to 1 ratio, won’t stop me from buying some Platinum though.

[phoreverphamily (Musicopia)]

Why did they have to call it platinum anyways? Warframe already has that as their currency couldn’t they come up with something original.
Platinum has a sort of stigma with me as a player (spent a lot of hours in warframe)

[vengerin]

Yeah, but those MOBAs? Are ■■■■■■■ free to play!

Battleborn already got a chunk of our money, and not 20 euros, not 30 euros… a AAA price that entitle us to what? Re-colors only?? Not even a couple of non recolor skins? What’s next? Buy seasonal skins in the place of getting them via shift code like Borderlands?

I get they need money, I get they didn’t sell as much as they wanted to (the blame on 2K for not doing advertisement for the game), I get they are trying to get money in any place they could and for that they cut the price of the game but god, don’t compare them to League of Legends or Smite when those games doesn’t ask you for an entry fee, not even the new Paragon is gonna do that, it’s a free to play too even its graphics are amazing.

My god, some people are acting like this game is free or was like a present from Gearbox to their fans.

And, speaking about MOBAs, I can buy a skin for 400 store coin in Smite AND also buy a pack with just those… also I can grind the login reward and the multiple gems events (gem is the coin for the store) till I get for one skin or play lotto with one of the store chest that also can’t drop a duplicate, always drops something you don’t have. And again, is a freaking free to play where I didn’t have to pay 60 euros plus season pass to play, just play.

Guys, really, you can love a dev company and see the ■■■■ in their publisher company, isn’t bad, you aren’t less fans to call them in their ■■■■■■ practices or want your money worth. Really.

[Misguided]

Just to clarify, I don’t think that people who are unhappy with the system are wrong. They should vote with their wallets, absolutely. But it makes no sense to me to base an opinion about it on the cost to acquire everything on offer.

@phoreverphamily yeah, I thought the same thing, re: warframe