You probably should in all honesty. There is zero price protection anywhere in mobile gaming - not on the Apple app store, not on Google Play, not on Amazon's Android store, not the PSN, not on Nintendo's online shop, not even on Steam where games often cost exactly the same as the physical copy from a B&M store. It is simply not part of the economic model, and making it part of the economic model would put us into a very, very different development and consumer landscape. You can't just look at this one transaction and say, damn, I wasted $3. You were able to buy a full fledged game from a proven developer for $6, that's already a benefit to you and enough of a point to destroy any concept that *you* are out anything. You benefit everyday from the wild west free market of the app store where Apple will sell apps from anyone who can scrape together $99/year alongside apps from Apple, Adobe, EA, 2K, etc.. The consumer benefit from the insane levels of competition to survive in a store with one million products with hardly a curating system in sight more than makes up for any perception of loss from a sale like happened with Epoch 2. You're having a classic "cake and eat it too" fit. You want all win, all the time, and, while that's not shocking, it's hardly laudatory either. If you want the sort of consumer protection you can expect buying a Nintendo game at Target for $35, you're going to have to pay a lot more than $6 for Epoch 3.
Best I could figure the dev is based in Australia, so stuff like price protection may be a foreign concept. Either way this is a foreign concept to all digital software services out there. Price protection just doesn't exist in any country for digital software/videos/music. Devs can choose whatever pricing scheme they want. Similarly I can choose weather or not to support such schemes. But as for this game, based on what I read in the thread and on reviews listed on metacritic... it sounds like this is very similar to the grindy/freemium nature of the first game. But to me any game built around requiring a coin doubler and grinding starts losing my interest of ever being purchased anyway. I expect level grinding in a turn based rpg, but not in a third person shooter. Plus whatever anyone thinks this game is worth, the first one has been on sale for $0.99 so many times it's silly... yet they managed to make enough to develop SnowJinks, this sequel, and hire more people. So how are they possibly making enough at $0.99? It's either the IAP or it's been profitable at $0.99. I'd imagine this is phase 2 of the business marketing plan and soon enough it'll go back up in price then in a few weeks it'll drop again and eventually drop to $0.99 or even free. Either way the discussion has kind of run it's course. No one here has any control over appstore, though there certainly are devs that are responsible for pricing their own games that participate on these forums. All we gamers though can do is figure out if a game is worth buying and go from there. To me this wasn't worth $6, or $3, and may not even be worth my time for Free. For others its more than worth $6 and even $6 + more for the doubler and possibly more for some ingame currency to lower the grind. For others $3 is a huge bargain.
It is worrying that users like Exact-Pscience call people in the price-reduction forums "buckholes" and grandstand so much. People should have a right to say what they want about the sales, but nowadays, this forum just a battlefield, which is sad, cause it used to be pretty informative.
Yes, people have all the right in the world to condemn a developer for putting a game up for sale so soon after release, but maybe, if they took the time to realize -why- a sale was happening in the first place, they'd complain less. I was one of the few people who wasn't angry when DT's price tag was reduced to free. For me, when it first came out, it was well worth the full $0.99. I had no regrets, essentially. Other people didn't value the game at that high a price tag and decided to wait for a price drop. That's perfectly fine. That's how they valued the content, and they have every right to value it so. Maybe people are angry that other people value a game they consider superb at a smaller value?
What I find a little disturbing in the price reduction forums nowadays, is all this name calling, terms like buckholes, cheapskates, buck gamers, etc. It is one thing to inform users of why things are happening, but all too often in the PRICE REDUCTION FORUM, new users or veterans for that matter are just being ridiculed by being put on the spot here. I think it has put a damper on this forum, which is sad, cause it used to be so informative. Especially I feel sorry for some of the new users here when they get pounced on for saying they are hurt for buying a game one day, and the next it is free by some seasoned vets here or suspicious accounts. While I agree, it is good to educate people about the devs point of view, and also support ios gaming by buying premium games instead of everyone waiting to get it free, the current environment of fast sales and frees, bait and switches, etc, are not conducive for it. I like ios gaming, and I wish it the best. I really do.
I agree with your sentiment here Connector, where name calling is completely unnecessary on a price reduction forum. That said, this area of the forum should be about advising iOS gamers of sales they can enjoy on noteworthy titles, but recently this has deteriorated to include a lot of negativity and point scoring. The AppStore is not what it was, due mainly to the successes of freemium games over the last couple of years. Indie devs are finding market forces much more difficult where even companies like Pocket God makers, Bolt Creative are resorting to downgrade the recent title Ooga Jump to a free to play model after disappointing early sales. Few devs can actually demand a 'premium' price at the moment, which in AppStore terms is probably $5 vs 10 times this price on consoles. It seems we have been 'spoilt' for too long and this has blinkered our view of entitlement and have resorted to in-fighting. Hopefully the we will start to see more positive threads as we approach the holiday season and spread goodwill to our fellow gamers.....peace out #
Yeah, I agree with you, just it is really getting hard to read this price reduction forum cause all of the in fighting and name calling, and often picking on the newbie. And yes, some of it does seem like grandstanding, since those users don't post in these price reduction forums much on a usual basis. But yeah, hope the holiday cheer will be upon everyone soon, and we can use this forum to recommend good games out there, cause the reality is, there are more and more people waiting, hopefully, they can get informative information about some good quality games, and purchase them, so we can somehow turn this trend in freemiums. #
Name calling is bad, sure, but WTF with those guys criticizing the dev and saying all that just because of a sale?! YOU bought the game at a price you accepted. No one pointed a gun at you saying "buy the fu**ing game now before the game is put on sale tomorrow, C'MON!!!!". The game was put on sale the following day? Well, I'm sorry for that, but it's just your fault, bad luck or however you want to call it. Sure, it's annoying, and I felt that way sometimes with some games I bought (Dead Trigger and Trigger Fist, for example), but I learned to accept that and move on. Also, IDK if this is the case for some people here, but all this price-reduction-after-release rants most of the time come from people who bought a game based on first day reviews from other players and such BUT didn't like the game too much, hence the rants about the price. There's a nice fix for that problem: WAIT. Get the AppShopper app and put on the Wish List all those great games with hyped reviews that get released each week, and insta-buy only the games you need to play. I'm sure everyone that's in TA has at least a game in the backlog that's yet to be completed or even played for the first time.
For those of us whose primary platform isn't ios, putting a launch sale 4 days after and calling it a launch sale spits in the face of loyal customers. Simple as that.
They better get used to it. Chicken Boy is even worse than Epoch 2. It just went free after 5-6 days.
I don't find it intrusive. There's a medium sized button after every mission that says "double credits" to buy the credit doubler (button was also in E1), and part of the game is replaying missions multiple times in the different game modes so some may call it grinding, but the truth is it's just playing the game. Also the only way to get all intercepts is replaying missions so you're always playing for something so I don't think it's ever much of a grind (the game is fun anyway). But heck, if Infinity Blade isn't grinding then this isn't
So, similar to replaying the levels in Bit Trip Run to get better score and get more coins? not like monotonous pointless grinding?
a ton of grinding required, even with credit doubler - but if you want game impressions just go to the main thread here http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=209275
Not at all! It's really interesting to get all the intercepts and read them. Plus after completing the mission on regular, you unlock Time Trial and Iron Mode (a timed mission mode and a hard mode respectively) for that mission. So in order to 3 star the mission you gotta beat it in all 3 modes. I definitely recommended you pick this game up, especially since its on sale (; haha
This is getting silly now. The games dropped in price, it happens all the time. Talk about the game but lets not keep going over the same thing. If you aren't happy about the price drop then talk to the dev. People cant obviously agree, just move on, this keeps going on and on and on. Other people will be put in time-out if they cant simply let go about this.
