Price Balancing

[icestormganon]

Hello Dev,

I’ve been playing since the playtest and been generally having fun with this. The game has a lot of potential and I’m glad to see you regularly updating. It also looks like it’s been a success sales-wise for you, so congratulations.

I know you have a lot on your plate, but I think you should start to tweak the economy a bit. I brought up two things during the playtest before:

1 – Single Card Prices Are To High: This is actually a lot better than in the playtest, but before it was generally better to open packs and make a tons of cash off the singles. Before I would open a pack and get about $30 worth of cards on average that I could sell sealed for only $4. These seem to be a bit more balanced, generally most packs I open these days are duds, but the higher price cards that are eventually pulled are generally worth it. Single cards are definitely my main money maker. This is fine, except it really hurts the other products in the store.

2 – Bulk Licenses: I pointed out that there was no benefit (Well, maybe convenience?) for buying the larger box license for projects because they equal the same cost. This is still the case. I recently accidentally bought one by a mis-click and I feel like I wasted $500. These should be made to help reduce costs for the shop to make them worthwhile OR set-up in such a way that if you buy the license, you can then buy either box without paying the license twice.

Now playing the full game, I want to expand on the licenses in general a bit, because I feel they are over-costed for the margin you get with the products.

3 – Licenses for different colored products and market value: Take the deck boxes, for example. Each color requires a separate purchase of a license. However, in my game, the blue deck boxes sell for a lot more than the red deck boxes. I do realize that this isn’t entirely unrealistic to have one color be more popular than others, but I make $11 dollars more on the blue ones than the red, so it makes far more sense for me to carry just the blue ones.

4 – License cost: The licenses are generally too high for the margin; it can take a very long time to cover the cost. For example, I bought a license for the Fire Deck for $1000. After I priced it, I figured out that I would have to sell 83 of the decks to cover the cost of the license if the market value stayed the same. I started out with one box (18 units, I think?) and I have not sold out of those units since purchase over about 3 days. And I still have the three other basic decks for $1000 each that I haven’t even touched yet.

So overall, I think the fees for the licenses should be reduced. I also think that similar items (different colors, different decks in the same set) should be grouped together for a license. Price differences for the variation products does make sense, maybe a deck has a chase card in it and the other decks don’t or something, but some sort of balance on like items would be nice. This will also help out if you do release additional card games by reducing the overall amount of licenses you need to buy.

I know it’s hard to get the numbers just right without the game feeling like a steamroll, so I would encourage you to start playing around with them while we are still in early access. Again, right now single cards seem too powerful.

[Sapper Woody]

I do not necessarily disagree with your main point about the single cards, but I don't exactly agree, either. Right now in my shop, I am level 25. My bills come up to about 1200 per day right now, and I make a profit of roughly 1k per day. Single card sales are maybe $200 at the very maximum per day for me (usually closer to $100), which means that at the highest, my single card sales are only 10% of my gross income.

So, I disagree that single cards are too powerful. However, I do agree that single cards do seem to harm other products. I quit selling cards that were less than $10 in value, because the cheaper cards were flying off the shelves even at 30% above market. But, I also noticed that sometimes people would come in, and buy only a $2 card.

[icestormganon]

They are 10% of your gross income, but are you considering the profit margin? If you sell your cheapest card, $10, that's at least $5 - 7 dollars more than selling the single pack it came out of, and if you are lucky you might have gotten another expensive card out of that same pack. If you consider the actual cost of the pack, it's even more of a profit. But then you get cards that can be a lot more than that, cards that are worth more than the case they came in, sometimes far more. Opening cases is always better than selling the packs, I just sell the packs anyways to have a more realistic shop.

Besides that, your single sales seems low to me. How many single stands do you have going? My shop must be smaller because my rent/bills is about $170, I'm at level 18 right now and I have been making $2000+ per day after buying stock. I make $300 plus on my tournie tables. I have been running 3 stands, I just bought more room and a 4th stand.
Depending on my luck, I'm making over $600 average on my cards. Overall I am selling more in other merchandise than singles, but the profit margin on the singles is so much more than everything else

[Sapper Woody]

At level 25, I've bought all the expansions of my shop I can, and I have three employees. This brings my daily bills way up (I think $450 alone for employees?). I have a stand for each of the products that I have unlocked so far. I have three of the singles tables, but they are rarely filled since I only sell cards I pull that are higher than $10 in value.

My current strategy is each morning I open up one box of each of the basic expansion colors while my stockers stock the shelves, then I open up shop. I mark up the singles by 30% above market, then round (I keep everything even dollar amounts, so my cashier works faster).

On average, the singles are worth more money than would selling the individual packs; I'll agree on that point. However, they also require a lot more work from the player (opening the packs, placing the cards, and pricing each card) and you also can't sell every single, nor is it worth it (imo) to do so.

With the current prices of the boxes that I open, I need to sell about $250 worth of singles to turn a profit on them (The last box sells at market for around $100, and I have it marked up to $110.) What keeps it worth opening packs for me is the occasional "Large pull" of a card that's worth $100 or more. Plus, I simply enjoy opening the packs.

Edited to Add: I also have 5 gaming tables. I'm in the process of making room for more. I'm also thinking of starting a game save where all I have are gaming tables, to see if it's viable.

[Darkeon]

im at around level 25 as well, and while I agree that when you pull a chase single, that will be the largest part of your income for the day likely, but I am currently averaging about 8500 a day in revenue, with profit varying between +6000 and -6000, depending on if I got lots of stock or upgrades that day. I have 1 employee on register, and 1 stocking shelves, and spend most of the day opening packs, and buying stuff that needs to be restocked.

I think while the liscence fees are very expensive, they are not there to logically be paid off, they are just that way so there is a form of progression. certain customers will be looking for a specific item, and if you dont have it they just leave without buying anything at all, so carrying all colors of all items is worth it for that reason. and the bulk licenses are good for stocking lots of product efficiently so your employees can restock shelves