New Low Prices on Licenses

[graziano.girelli]

Sorry, but that makes no sense. Unless you can time travel.

Would you have been happier if the price went up?

I am not going to respond further to this, so feel free not to respond to my rhetorical question.

If there is something that really bothers me, it is when someone makes stupid assumptions and does not read what I have written.
Please READ how I started the sentence, and THEN re-read your statements.
The text is easy and immediately understandable, as LordEntrails demonstrated in the post immediately following yours.
I only pointed out how drastically the price of the ultimate licence has fallen: it's a 66% drop in value over a few years. Allow me to say that I find this a bit annoying ALWAYS Bearing in mind that the money saved on the licence I would have ALWAYS spent on expansions and modules for AD&D.
As far as I am concerned, the topic is closed. It was just an observation.
I apologise in advance if my tone comes across as harsh, but I really can't stand it when people make blatantly silly assumptions like ‘being happy about a price increase’.

[Trenloe]

I cannot be happy at all, since when I bought the ultimate licence a few years ago I paid 145 euros (3 times as much as today!).

I would understand being unhappy if you paid 145 Euros only a few months ago, not a few years ago. Your account was created 6 years ago, so I'm guessing (but could be wrong) that you've had maybe 4-6 years use out of your FG license before the recent price drop?

The price drop is due to the current VTT landscape - to keep FG competitive in the marketplace so that it can operate for many years to come, which will allow you to continue to use your ultimate license years into the future.

You're unhappy, fair enough you're entitled to your own feelings. I just struggle to understand being unhappy, and publicly posting that unhappiness, about the cost difference when you purchased over a few years ago.

[deer_buster]

I would understand being unhappy if you paid 145 Euros only a few months ago, not a few years ago. Your account was created 6 years ago, so I'm guessing (but could be wrong) that you've had maybe 4-6 years use out of your FG license before the recent price drop?

The price drop is due to the current VTT landscape - to keep FG competitive in the marketplace so that it can operate for many years to come, which will allow you to continue to use your ultimate license years into the future.

You're unhappy, fair enough you're entitled to your own feelings. I just struggle to understand being unhappy, and publicly posting that unhappiness, about the cost difference when you purchased over a few years ago.

Their point is valid, whether you agree with it or not. 4-6 years from now the people that buy today will have the same amount of usage that those of us that bought 4-6 years ago do today, but will have paid significantly less than us. The cost to produce FGU didn't go down, but yet those that bought into it before this SIGNIFICANT price drop bore the brunt of it.

Me personally, I feel it was money well spent, but I understand that it can be felt like being "screwed in the drive-thru".

Empathy is a wonderful thing

[Jiminimonka]

Their point is valid, whether you agree with it or not. 4-6 years from now the people that buy today will have the same amount of usage that those of us that bought 4-6 years ago do today, but will have paid significantly less than us. The cost to produce FGU didn't go down, but yet those that bought into it before this SIGNIFICANT price drop bore the brunt of it.

Me personally, I feel it was money well spent, but I understand that it can be felt like being "screwed in the drive-thru".

Empathy is a wonderful thing

I am not sure its got anything to do with empathy.

Lord Entrails summed it up well. Competition drives prices down and us that bought it at the higher price contributed to FG getting to its 20th anniversary.

We invested in the best VTT. I got a lot of mileage for my money so far as have my many players

[ddavison]

We absolutely understand feeling a bit disappointed if you paid a lot more for the licenses and see that they are on sale for cheaper now. We worked with some of our long term partners to provide everyone who already had a license with some freebies to help soften the blow, and we added a few smaller items from our end as well. Everyone with a license before the price drop should have these on their account for free:

• Hearts and Skulls Dice Pack
• Stars and Clovers Dice Pack
• Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) Ruleset
• Black Scrolls - Sewer Map Pack
• Pathfinder RPG - Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Docks

[deer_buster]

I am not sure its got anything to do with empathy.

Lord Entrails summed it up well. Competition drives prices down and us that bought it at the higher price contributed to FG getting to its 20th anniversary.

We invested in the best VTT. I got a lot of mileage for my money so far as have my many players

Nobody is disputing value for money proposition. Indeed, I confirmed my feeling that it was money well spent.

We're just acknowledging that some people might feel slightly bitter about having paid so much more than it now costs, without trying to make them feel bad about how they feel. That's where the empathy comes in. Acknowledge, empathize, move on.

[graziano.girelli]

We absolutely understand feeling a bit disappointed if you paid a lot more for the licenses and see that they are on sale for cheaper now. We worked with some of our long term partners to provide everyone who already had a license with some freebies to help soften the blow, and we added a few smaller items from our end as well. Everyone with a license before the price drop should have these on their account for free:

• Hearts and Skulls Dice Pack
• Stars and Clovers Dice Pack
• Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) Ruleset
• Black Scrolls - Sewer Map Pack
• Pathfinder RPG - Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Docks

I hope to clarify my thoughts definitively, since being Italian I may have written differently from what I have instead in my head.
My regret is due not to the price of the license itself paid years ago, but to the fact that with the current price I could have bought more modules to add to the ones I have and have a more complete collection, since the difference between the two prices is very wide.
That is all. I have never said or even thought that I have spent my money badly, or that I am complaining because the price has gone down instead of up, as someone wrote.
The next purchases (again for AD&D) are already planned for when I return from various business trips from the Far East (since I don't like to use my credit card outside my home network!). I have invested a fair amount, and will continue to spend on FG to get all the published material for AD&D.
I hope this is all made clear.

[snupy]

I think lowering the price was a good move, and a needed one to keep FG competitive. Hopefully that will result in more users, so more development an implemented feature.

I am not bothered by what happened despite being a fairly recent (<1 year) user who got the license at a sale - still I probably paid more than the current price.

If I really had to nitpick: announcing a sale and then keeping the sale price after the sale ends could be perceived as slightly disingenuous. In a sense the sale lowered price is the reward for deciding to buy at the right time. If the price stays low you don't get to feel smart about your purchase, and in fact you could feel slightly played. More offensive versions of this include shops which seem to always be liquidating/closing/etc, or pretend discount prices. While I do not know, I like to think that when the FG sale was announced it had not already been decided to keep the lower price at the end of it.

Nitpick #2 is that I believe all users who bought during the sale period got the freebies, so not just preexisting/long time users?

Anyway, just wanted to join in the discussion, I am not bothered nor I think I am owned something because of the lowered price.

[ddavison]

Correct. They also got the freebies, so the best possible time was to buy during the sale.

Dropping the price this much is a big gamble for us, but the pricing that we settled in is the most competitive option. We have to make it up in volume of 2X sale on Standard and 3X on sales of Ultimate. The sale let us test the water at that price point and have enough confidence to make the permanent move. A sale almost always creates more volume than a regular price and now that we are discounted, it didn’t leave us much room for further sales. There is not really a good way to satisfy everyone, but it seemed like a worse decision to bump back up to $150 for a while once we decided that $50 was going to be our new price.

[snupy]

Correct. They also got the freebies, so the best possible time was to buy during the sale.

Dropping the price this much is a big gamble for us, but the pricing that we settled in is the most competitive option. We have to make it up in volume of 2X sale on Standard and 3X on sales of Ultimate. The sale let us test the water at that price point and have enough confidence to make the permanent move. A sale almost always creates more volume than a regular price and now that we are discounted, it didn’t leave us much room for further sales. There is not really a good way to satisfy everyone, but it seemed like a worse decision to bump back up to $150 for a while once we decided that $50 was going to be our new price.

Thanks for the reply, I think it was the right decision then. Perhaps you could offer people who purchased within 30 days before the sale started a coupon for the price difference to be spent on the FG shop. It would be a nice touch which could increase product loyalty, certainly not something due or required. Within that time scale they could have refunded and repurchased anyway, but may have not noticed or thought about it (I would not be among the ones affected by this so I am not proposing the idea in the hope of getting something out of it).