tl;dr: Make color prisms easier and cheaper to obtain + bring back Steam Market = Happy players and more money for you
The Problem
The current sales model of color prisms (all variants) is prohibitively expensive and painfully gated behind several layers of RNG transactions to the point that even whales hesitate to spend money for them. Even if color prisms were to be redeemed by whales (via Mythic Star Style Box or Atelier Reliquary) they are mostly done so in limited quantities. I state this as a self proclaimed cosmetic whale on
Kronos with over $18k USD in spend over just the last 15 months. I’ve hit the 0.01% Atelier Reliquary jackpot (100 feathers), I regularly buy PSSBs when they have items I find attractive, and I still struggle to justify the costs and the time required to obtain enough prisms for the outfits I want to create.
Personally speaking, I have so many outfits that I want to make with each outfit needing different pieces of NX to be dyed but the current system just takes way too much work (having to open Atelier Reliquaries for Feathers or Premium Surprise Style Boxes to turn into Star Stamps). Given the number of items I would like to dye the amount of effort required to create an entire outfit is very high. In addition the monetary cost of dying any individual item is also high with entire outfits potentially requiring several hundred dollars in color prisms. It has gotten to the point where I need to pick and choose what outfits I want to make and try to limit my outfits to only requiring one or two dyed items at maximum.
This is not acceptable. The process of customizing a character should not be this difficult and the barrier to entry should not be this high. With the current state of customization monetization in MapleStory the entire process of purchasing NX and using said purchased NX to customize one's character has become a chore. Normally I would be willing to spend even more money on cosmetics than I already have however the current method of obtaining color prisms in conjunction with the recent less than stellar cash shop updates (PSSB rotations and Black Friday sales) has caused me to reconsider where I spend my money.
In addition, even if I had unlimited color prisms there are many outfits I want to make that I simply cannot because specific items are no longer available. It is great that
~2000 items became available for dying in the most recent update however many of the items are simply not available to me (because I play on Kronos).
Proposed Solution
If color prisms--especially pro prisms--were available at a reasonable, fixed price, I would likely purchase 5–15 per week without hesitation. Making color prisms (even if just the regular and premium variants) more easily accessible helps breed creativity in the playerbase and encourages more people to spend money on cosmetics. The color prism system is also highly complimentary to the previous Steam Market system that was recently discontinued by Nexon as being able to dye NX equipment means more people would be willing to spend money purchasing items on the Steam Market just to dye them. Anecdotally I myself purchased a handful of items off the Steam Market purely out of speculation that they would become dyable in the future (which they did). I believe that Nexon should re-introduce the Steam Market (or some variant of it) and leverage both the Steam Market and the color prism system to create a flywheel that serves as
an additional consistent revenue stream that also appeases many of the playerbase's concerns over how cosmetics are being monetized and made available.
How does this flywheel work?
1. Color prisms encourage people to seek out additional NX equipment for the purpose of character customization: people would go to the Steam Market to buy items that were released in past cash shop updates
2. The Steam Market would encourage people to buy more color prisms since if they find an interesting item on the Steam Market they may potentially also dye the item
Both systems would create additional demand for each other while achieving:
1. Increased player happiness due to more accessible character customization
2. Increased revenue for Nexon as color prisms are essentially a mechanism with which additional value can be derived from items that were already previously sold via NX equipment package, PSSB, etc (this is basically a double-dip for Nexon)
Moreover, if the Steam Market were to be re-introduced in some variant and especially if Maple Points were used (ala IGN Auction) then Nexon could potentially achieve even higher revenue. This new revenue stream would also be resilient to less popular cash shop updates as players would still be purchasing dye prisms and NX equipment off of the Steam Market.
Conclusion
The way that color prisms are being monetized is egregious as prisms are locked behind tedious and prohibitively expensive loot boxes (e.g. the Atelier Reliquary and Mythic Star Style Box) such that most people will only obtain a limited quantity of prisms (if they can even afford it), and even if people have prisms there are a lot of outfits that they might want to create that are quite literally impossible due to certain items no longer being unavailable. Nexon needs to re-evaluate how monetization for cosmetics is done in general and consider how monetization can be better implemented while satisfying the needs of the playerbase. This flywheel model I outlined above is only a suggestion and I encourage Nexon to explore other solutions in addition to what I suggested. Overall what I would like to see out of cosmetic monetization is the following:
1. A system that encourages player creativity instead of stifling it
2. Reduced friction in player customization
Comments
The community is greatly disappointed and is telling each other not to spend because something that would have encouraged praise and creativity is locked behind a predatory paywall that only the top spenders can afford. I can also confirm that I’ve heard top spenders hesitate and be very picky about what they choose to dye because it just isn't worth it. The majority of the playerbase cannot even access such items and are left feeling bitter and hating on Nexon. Like Manami, I’ve been stockpiling perms with multiple backups for a while and really looked forward to dyeing almost all my items, but I'm not going to bother to feed into either mythic boxes or the atelier reliquary because they’re just ridiculously expensive cash grab systems.
Next, I want to bring up the issue with feathers. Why on earth was the jackpot feather amount reduced to 100 when in KMS it's 1000?? It just doesn't make sense with the currency conversion. KMS on the left; GMS on the right.
The usd is stronger than the Korean won, yet GMS players are paying more and getting less for their money. Note that 1000 won = 1000 nx so prices for cash items are a 1:1 ratio in KMS. If you compare the currencies between America and Korea, $1 usd is stronger and gets you about 1473 won/1473 nx. The atelier reliquary equivalent in KMS are boutique gifts which are 3300 won - that's $2.24 in usd but instead we pay $3.40. Premium prisms are 5900 won - that's supposed to be $4 usd, but players have calculated $85+ from feathers. Freestyle coupons cost 5500 won - that's $3.79 usd, but again, $85+ from feathers. And the KMS version of pssb is 2200 won which = $1.50 usd but instead we pay $3.40. We are paying way more than the Koreans for $1 worth of nx, and on top of that, most of our items are still behind rng. Nexon America should at least match the feather amount to KMS and move some items to the cash shop if they want to be greedy and charge us more.
Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
I would also like the steam market brought back, or a variation of it. If steam has too many bugs and issues, create an in-game system. Maybe something like a second auction house for everyone in GMS to access that still uses Oswell’s scissors? Let the community trade their worn and unwanted items to people that could make better use of them. Otherwise, how are new players supposed to obtain rare perms that haven’t been available for years? There also needs to be a way to access items no one has anymore instead of waiting months to years for them to be put into style box rotations. And when are we even getting choice hair and faces directly from the cash shop like KMS? Certain hair and face styles can also take years to release again.
Like Manami said, if cosmetic items were priced reasonably and sold in the cash shop, players would have bought stacks of premium prisms, prism pros, freestyle coupons, custom skin colours, and multiple copies of perms. We could have had a thriving fashion community to share unique character designs and dye ideas; but instead GMS continues to gatekeep cosmetics behind rng, high prices, and the much hated mythic boxes + atelier reliquary. All this ruins creativity, frustrates the community, and drives players away. Let us play fashionstory and be creative.
I bought just enough feathers to buy a color prism pro. It feels so difficult to commit all that money for 1 piece out of the various items across several outfits I would like to recolor on main, champions, and mules.
As it stands, I definitely get more out of the prism by just holding onto it and playing around with previews, dreaming of "what could be", and discussing fashion ideas with friends.
As Manami put it, if the prisms were accessible I would also be more inclined to recurrently drop USD on prisms every few days/weeks, so as to recolor several pieces of a new outfit once the previous one gets old. Instead I feel stuck with a single ~80 USD feather-based prism that I'm holding on indefinitely to play around with preview; it's just way too high stakes to actually commit it to a single item as it stands.
Likewise as Manami puts it in relation to the prisms and the steam market, I would have made quite more purchases if I was aware we could eventually recolor our items for a fair price. Even the recent addition of enabling/disabling specific weapon animations makes me regret not having bought weapons I loved in design but where specific effects were a dealbreaker.