I’m considering reworking the shop in Strucid. Right now, Strucid has one freemium currency which can be used to purchase cases that give you a random accessory. There’s also a limited time shop that updates every few days with new items and most of these items can only be purchased with Robux while a few can be purchased with coins. Because so many of these items can only be bought with Robux, the community has been complaining about it. In response, I’m planning on making everything in the limited time shop purchasable via coins. The shop is going to update frequently enough that players can’t just keep grinding coins to unlock everything. They’ll eventually have to purchase coins with Robux to unlock items they really want.
So while I’m making this change, I thought it might be a good idea to introduce a premium currency because a lot of games have it. What exactly are some advantages of having a premium currency and how should I implement it, if at all, into my current shop structure?
Well, since premium currency blocks really rare items (I’m guessing for strucid it would), people would be more attracted to it over coins. What I mean by this is people would want to buy the premium currency. Take coins and gems for example. Coins give skins, gems give guns (never going to be like that in strucid). Since guns are only obtainable by gems. People would try and go for that more. I also suggest implementing this by making a new item. For example, back bling or something, and have people only be able to purchase it with you premium currency, or as I used in my example, gems. Kind of off-topic but I love strucid and you should keep up the amazing work! Hopefully this helped.
I know, I just used it as an example. I edited the post maybe giving an idea of how to implement this. I said back bling, but that is already soemthing you get out of crates. But I personally think you should make a new item, and make it only purchasable for your premium currency.
Instead of removing the idea of Premium Currency, concider Premium Currency-only gun styles, skin styles, and harvesting tool styles. Every once in a while add a Premium Only skin for a day or two to help ones without robux. Perhaps a player can earn this currency completing daily challenges randomly given every day which awards a small amount of currency.
As like how fortnite does it with their gun skins?
Don’t think this would work out because pheniox already has coin challenges. He could add his premium currency to the challenge, but they are really easy. And there is only 3 challenges allowed for free daily, I think. Not sure about the last part, I will recheck.
Mhm, thats the general idea. Awarding a small add on for doing challenges or leveling or tiering(?) up. Perhaps in the strucid War Pass it can award a small amount for some tiers. Just a small addition to the game to make it more interesting.
I would suggest you use robux as your premium currency. It doesn’t make that much sense to have an in game premium currency, when players would use robux to buy that anyway!
Well I guess one big positive to premium currency is you generally get more players engaged. Take me for example, I play Strucid everyday but I never pay for anything that cost robux. (Sorry). I love the game, but your items are priced in huge amounts, something not often found in games. And this turns away many players. A lot of games instead of this have micro transactions which are more appealing to players and sometimes can even bring in more robux.
And like I said, if more people get engaged and addicted to buying things they may just be willing to spend more and more robux buying coins. Which may make more robux in the long run.
A few things missed by others that are actually beneficial:
Refunds
Premium currencies are significantly easier to refund for items than R$ if there’s ever a situation where you want to give someone a refund (either due to a glitch or honest complaint). If you were to refund in R$, it’s just an annoyance.
Sale incentives
Theoretical: Item X is worth 100 [premium currency]…
In this theoretical, imagine you have premium currency gamepass purchase options that are 75 [premium currency] for 50 R$, 150 for 90 R$, etc…
Now imagine you award players 1 or 2 [premium currency] for winning or getting in the top three…
In this theoretical, I can either overbuy premium currency, or underbuy and grind by actually playing the game. Or I can grind out the game normally without spending anything, over a period of weeks, to get the item I want.
Sunk cost, Remaining value
If I sunk 90 R$ to buy 150 [premium currency] then I’m going to want to spend more to get the next 100 [premium currency] item, or I’m going to continue playing to win the remaining 50. The 50 [premium currency] I’d have is going to seem like a waste until I spend it.
Disclaimer: These marketing tactics are primarily useful for cosmetic items. I wouldn’t recommend this for items that provide a tactical advantage.
Agreed also its worth noting players will buy it more in general.
When items cost robux no one actually bothers to buy it, but when there is a chance it can be earned (assuming this premium currency is earnable) players will get a taste for having premium items and they will develop the addiction to get it. Then people will be tempted anyway to spend robux. Its kinda sneaky when I explain it this way, but it is how it happens.
Almost everybody is taking the side of premium currency so let’s undo this almost one-sided argument .
@Aotrou some really good points that I probably won’t be able to counter. Here goes nothing
If you’re asking that question, don’t you think you should? The only reason you would be having a premium currency is to either
entice people into buying it to get special items, or
making it really hard to get otherwise (still possible, however) and making sure they buy it to get what they want.
If choice 1. is irrelevant because you could just charge it for robux/people are already complaining about this, and choice 2. is also irrelevant because you could replace it with robux, why not just skip the hassle and do that?
Depends on how it’s done. If it’s earnable in game, it provides incentive to buy while still not hurting F2P retention.
A second use is to abstract the true price of an item; many younger kids won’t sit down and do the math to figure out how much money they’d REALLY have to spend to buy it, causing them to lose concept of how much they’re spending and thus spend more.
A third use is to allow you, in particular when using webhooks, to buy perks in multiple games conveniently; you just add currency to your account, then buy at your leisure, rather than going through lots of steps each purchase if you don’t bulk buy Robux.
To be fair, 90% games I play have a premium currency, and I like the concept a ton more than just one currency, AND Robux. Let’s say you don’t want to hand out an cosmetic for free or through the non-premium currency. Using 100 gems instead of 100 Robux will
benefit you in the following ways:
You can implement tasks to gain gems.
If you don’t feel like giving it out in the game itself, you can then maybe host some events where you give out currency for free, unlike Robux which is only tied to real money.
Gems aren’t dictated by Roblox. You can manage these in any way you’d like.
This would increase sales, as if a currency can’t be obtained for free by just playing, people are more likely to buy it than just grinding for the currency.
In fact, I for some reason try to avoid games on Roblox without a second currency, due to me always assuming “oh yeah, this game has only one currency so premium stuff is always going to cost Robux”.
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