okay, it seems like you have hard times in answering simple questions, so i will give an example:
Q: What would you consider as reasonable to pay for in toribash?
A: i consider it's as okay to pay for tc and to pay for items packs as already been mentioned.
i'm pretty sure thats you will come up with same.
so now time to use bits of brains: if players consider spending money on tc or items it may and should be on e of income sources. logical, isn't it?
so why removing free market? because if there will be no other agents except torishop to trade with, there whould not be price dumping, changes in currency, and overall all cash flow will go through nabi directly instead of tc sellers, marketeers n stuff.
afterall, player don't really care where to buy tc or items, he will try to get it cheaper anyway. and thats normal. player want to get everything for free or spent minimal ammount of money to get what he want. developers task to make him "happy" but get some cash and make sure that he will spend more later.
this is how marketing work everywhere no matter games or goods.
the only difference that in classic marteting model it heavily relies on "market liked this product, so it may buy more later" to imply it to games, if person liked call of battlefield 1, he may buy call of battlefield 2. to make sure he will there are PR tools, just like for any other products.
f2p model is a bit different and heavily rely on microtransactions, so person will buy bit of stuff every now and then.
applying it to toribash - items.
developer's goal is to make sure that it's actually possible to get all the items without donations atleast on theory, so bithces would not whine, but ofc it will take some time, so everything will seems fair.
and provide players an option to get what they desire faster, by donations. there need to be a range of items and priority, and here what marketing research for, to make sure "whales" will spend enough money for example on demon set and it will be enough for dev, you know, price ranging. and said vamp set will be avaible rather cheap or whatever. i have no access to statistics to range popularity of items so i could have a rough idea about it, but i'm prety sure black items are way more popular, so people may spend money several times or spend it alot once.
aaaand ofc i would love to see hunter removed, as it make demon and void mostly useless.
heck marketing is the same everywhere in any branch, except you don't have to lower the price of stuff that slack on your storage or buy / crap from importers, since you can do a few clicks and create any shit you want.
common sense.
Last edited by snob; Jan 7, 2013 at 12:07 PM.