Martyks

At least dont force people to spend more than they need for items if they want to support you, you pretty much always need to buy multiple packs because the prices are set in such scummy way.

Do you mean of the VP? Like buying VP bundles? Across all the different content we offer, it would be extremely difficult for us to make sure that there's always a VP bundle that captures exactly the amount players need. And I don't just mean as a game: purchasing in-game currency is done in collaboration with a central Riot team that handles it for League, Legends of Runeterra, and VALORANT. When we've chatted with players about this, we've learned that it's frustrating for a first purchase, but the frustration usually goes away pretty quickly, because it's very, VERY rare that players only buy cosmetics once in their entire lifecycle. It almost always gets put towards a later purchase. Please know, though, that this is something on our radar. We're keeping tabs on how players feel about this, and if we have good reason to prioritize this issue over other issues, we'll do that :) I hope this makes sense!

Hanzai-Jikanda

I mean in league of legends, Riot added a feature that basically gives you free skins without paying anything if you play the game. Valorant is still super new, don't expect free skins/ cheap skins this early, they still need to make up for their losses since this is a free game, all that marketing and all the employees working don't come cheap. I'd bet that we will get a system that gives free rewards/skins if you keep playing the game, just like league.

Hey fam! Just a reminder that you do get free cosmetics :) Through the character contracts and free battle pass, you get gun skins, calling cards, gun buddies, sprays, titles, etc. Don't forget to equip those when you get them lol!

Hey there OP.
I'm aeneia. I'm the researcher who worked on the pricing strategy for VALORANT (of course working closely with other folks, like our Rev Strat Guru SWAGGERNAU7).
I wanted to say thank you for this. A LOT of work went into determining our pricing strategy. And not just a few devs in conference rooms: we ran labs, surveys...made massive adjustments and tweaks...then more surveys, then more tweaks...all to create what you see in the store today.
Being honest, when I first joined the team and heard about our intentions for pricing, I wasn't convinced. I played League of Legends for 8 years and spent $20 that entire time for skins. I'm not a whale, not even close. But once I talked to our players...once I understood how all of our systems work together (Battle Passes, Character Contracts, Bundles, and more things we haven't announced yet!)...it made sense to me. And I've actually come to a place that I feel good about what we've put out there.
I'm working today, so I can't s...

Yolo_Quant

Yep. All my friends got it, it just how it is. Riot did the research and they know what they doing.

Personally I went in and got it because IMO riot deserves. They gave me an awesome game with quality servers and decent anti cheat. Not adding the fact that they are listening to the community.

We're trying our best to deserve your support fam :)

maxmurdoch

Thanks very much for your response.

SR achieves the goals you're describing well. I hadn't seen people asking for this. I'd only seen people asking for the things I described, which aligns with what I personally want, so I made a lazy assumption.

Still loving Valorant. Looking forward to whatever game mode you're cooking up!

It totally makes sense that you'd make that assumption. It's why we (at Riot) HAVE to do research. We're all gamers, and I can't tell you how many times we thought the players would want something (because we wanted it ourselves), then got totally put in our place when the players actually had a chance to speak for themselves. Thanks for engaging with me on this, and I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying the game! :)

Blastoiize

Seems like most people in this thread are expecting and feels entitled to the month's worth of chocolate. Even tho the game is free and you don't actually have to give them anything.

I can understand, though. It's really hard to see something that you want, only to discover it's not as accessible as you want. I appreciate your mentality on it :)

tony111222

Thanks for responding.

I think what everyone is trying to say is, if the $70 prime collection pack was $15 or $20, way more people would have purchased them. We really do like these skins, but a huge segment of the market is being alienated. Not to mention, the extra costs to upgrade the skins, it soars way past this price.

Those other skins you mentioned, should be in the $2 to $3 range.

The community truly does want to support Valorant, but at these prices, it just doesn't make any sense.

That's fair! More people would buy them. But I would have to disagree with you that those skins are worth $2-3 -- at least compared to other games in the genre. Just my two cents though :)

Sirvulcan12

Surely that has diminishing returns eventually?

Maybe I really am in the minority, but I remember saving up the money to buy spirit udyr and I just truly couldn't fathom spending much more than that on a single purchase.

Maybe the miss understanding lies in the value seen per skin.

Looking at the prices it feels the comparison that was drawn by riot was one gun skin roughly equals the value of one champion skin where I feel like a whole set is equal to value as a champion skin.

And those are both 100% valid opinions to have! It just comes down to how you, personally, value the product. A metaphor I've used is comparing it to chocolates. You can go to the grocery store and buy a month's worth of chocolate for like $8. That's an option. You can also go to a chocolatier and buy a really nice piece of chocolate for like $8. That's also an option. For some people, they're like, "WTF. I'm not dropping that much money on a piece of food that I'll enjoy for like 6 seconds." Other people are like, "I don't even want chocolate unless it's super high quality truffles, and that's something I'm willing to pay for." We're leaning more towards the latter. Personally, I'll drop money on high quality chocolate...but I'll never drop more than $10 on a tshirt or something like that. It's all about perspective and what you value, and that's different for everyone. All that said...we always want the gameplay to be 100% free, and we always want players to get at least SOME cool...

SimplyFrankie

I have a quick question regarding how reporting people who harass via voice chat works. Does RIOT record and monitor the voice chat so that when reports are made, RIOT can hear and punish those who are incredibly toxic?

Some people abuse the fact that in some games, the only thing that can be reported is text chat and go off in voice chat. Are we going to see the same problems here?

if you could provide some insight, it would be very much appreciated !

I'm not sure exactly what the system is right now...however, I can tell you FOR SURE that the goal is to have not only voice chat recorded for review, but to have AI that can recognize the worst of the worst (like racial slurs) to facilitate reporting systems. We're aware of the loopholes in other games. We're working really, really hard to seal those up in ours :)

uhoogaloo

It's still good - just not what some of us wanted for certain scenarios. Thanks for the hard work, and looking forward to the next modes :)

You're welcome :) And thank you so much for playing our game!

sh444iikoGod

the reminders are great indeed. i was ready to flame my teammates, but quickly checked reddit. luckily i saw this post and remembered 'not everyone is global elite in CSGO', so then i quickly changed my ways. all it took was this reminder

also you must be new to the internet if you think saying 'hey we dont do that here' will have any positive effect... lol. if youre gonna stick up for the person being made fun of, you better do it will full commitment & aggression or not at all

Definitely not new to the internet :P. And I have indeed seen it work! But hey, if that language doesn't feel right for you, don't use it. I'm just not an advocate for defending against verbal abuse...with more verbal abuse lol.

Kudo50

I did :) thank you for the answer anyway! thank you for the good work as well :)

Thank you so much :)

Kudo50

HI, I had a question regarding skin, not sure you can answer but we never know, is the reaver collection going to come back?

Unfortunately I can't say :(. But I hope you asking means you loved it!

Hey there fam! Something you might consider is that different people want alt game modes for different reasons. In our research, we found a TON. Here are just a few:
- More casual, less intense gameplay
- Lesser time commitment
- More opportunities for creative outplay
- One-for-all style allowing for solo play
- Zero abilities, only gunplay
Spike Rush meets some of these needs, but not all of them. It sounds like it wasn't your jam, and that kinda blows. But hopefully you'll find something that suits you better in the future :)

That hand in the foreground is just ...chef's kiss Well done OP! And thanks for showing our agents and game some love :)

I love seeing these reminders. Thank you so much :)
If you're interested in helping to shape our community in a positive way, here's a fun fact! Bystander intervention is the most effective method for dissolving a situation with a bully. However, that doesn't mean to start insulting and berating them. Comments like "Hey, we don't do that here," or "They're clearly new, and yelling at them isn't going to help." can be really helpful! (It's better to address the behavior, not the person.) Then, engage with the person who's getting bullied in a positive way. You might root them on, give them gentle feedback on how to improve their gameplay, or even just ask them how their day is going.
Hope this helps :) And thanks again for looking out for our newest recruits!

llamaeatgiraffe

I may just not understand the economics of it all but can someone explain to me why it isn’t possible to just balance the pricing to where they may make less off of whales but widen the circle enough to where more buyers make up for it and even it out?

There’s just no way it is reasonable to constantly monetize games to only appeal to <1% of the games population by making your prices so insanely inflated. What about a $10 price tag or something that ropes in waaay more buyers but reduces dependency on whales?

It’s bizarre to me that the most profitable and satisfying monetization scheme for your playerbase is one that excludes a MASSIVE portion of them.

These numbers that such a small percentage of people spend money on F2P games have to be skewed by their insane financial models that most sane people can’t justify participation in.

I wish the battle pass model was the norm in F2P, as long as the grind is reasonable for working people.

Hey there fam! I know it's common thing for people to assume higher prices means only whales will buy the skins...but that's actually not the case! The research we've done on League shows us that players generally prefer to save up money to buy a really good skin, rather than buy a few cheap, lower-quality skins. This is supported by the fact that players basically stopped buying tiers below League's Epic Tier (1350), thus explaining why 750s and 975s are so rarely available now.
That said, we do want accessible pricing -- so we also have the 875 tier skins (about $8.75 before the VP bundling discount) like Rush, Luxe, and Galleria.
For players who really need the lowest cost options, we have the Battle Pass (which, when completed, grants 11 gun skins), the Character Contracts (which are 100% free, never expire, and grant a free sidearm skin on completion), and a few other things in the works :) Remember, this is just Day 1!
Hope this helps :)

Thanks so much fam :) We wanted the Battle Pass to be just that: insane player value, especially for the players who invest so much time in our game. And it makes me really happy to know that it feels exactly that way for you :)
fistbump

we love you all so much <3 <3 <3 /sob/

SecretDeftones

I love you..literally
They should've listened to me on Aphelios UI, but it was too late.

we love you too fam <3