Trick or Treat: Are the New Component Deals Worth it?

As promised, Pixonic has delivered on the opportunity for players to make use of their stockpiles of Workshop Points (WSP) by converting them to Components. While my suggestion of a community-building 1:1 conversion rate went unheeded (not necessarily surprising), we now have some idea of what we can expect with a variety of deals being offered in the shop.

At the same time, we are still dealing with a community in distress over- amongst other things- the pricing that Pixonic set for the new bots and gear. Discounted initial Component pricing is an opportunity for Pixonic to cut the community a break, while at the same time not undercutting those players who had already shelled out the big bucks for the items.

Today I’m going to revisit the topic of WSP valuations that I last looked at this past June as part of my War Robots Wall Street series, and see where Pixo pegged their valuations.  Olive branch? Insult to injury? Or something in the middle, we’ll find out.

In addition, we’ll take a critical look at the process itself, and see where Pixonic should go from here.

Let’s start by revisiting the WSP valuation graph from that June article.

Fig. 1: WSP to Au conversion

This table shows the diminishing returns you get when buying WSP with Gold. You get a certain amount “free” every day (either truly free, or for a small amount of Ag), but if you want more in a single day you need to pony up the dosh. Somewhat ironically, perhaps, this structure essentially levies a “haste tax” upon those who want to leverage their credit card and buy their way to premium content. Oh, Halcyon days!

Fig. 2: Gold to USD conversion

Here we see the valuation of Gold relative to the dollar. The more you buy at once, the bigger a “bulk discount” you get. In its smallest bundles, a single Gold unit is about the equivalent of a penny (I rounded up the costs from $4.99 to $5.00 to keep things a bit simpler).

Fig. 3: Rates of exchange

Here we see some additional conversions, allowing us to see the price of Silver.

Next, we need to look at the default valuations for Components for all these premium goodies.

Fig. 4: The valuation of the new bots

Fig. 5: The valuations of the new weapons

My apologies for the visual inconsistency between the old graphs and new. The old were done on Excel, the newest batch on Google Sheets.

But there we have it, the dollar ranges of the new bots and weapons. For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to pass judgment on these prices, but simply accept the data as it is for today’s purpose.

Breaking it down this way lets us get a much better sense of the deals we’re being offered. One of the problems of having a multiplicity of currencies is that it can obfuscate the most important one: our money. Some folks may be happy just to put those stale WSP to good purpose and could care less about whatever return they’re getting, with the thought that anything greater than “zero” is a win. Nothing wrong with that, but for those a little more curious, let’s crunch some data!

Here are some of the special offers I’ve gotten in the past couple of days, in no particular order. Using the tables above, I’ll convert the currencies and compare them to see how the deals stack up.

For simplicity’s sake, I will be using the least-efficient values for all comparisons. In other words, what you’d get if you bought in small batches, and if you spent the minimum on Gold. 

What you get: You get $11.92 worth of Scourge components, and $4.00 of Ember, for a total of $15.92.

What you pay: 3,400 in WSP. You get 540 WSP per day before having to spend Gold, which is 30 WSP for free and a further 510 you can queue up for a total of 240,000 Ag. Using the conversion table above, we see that at the low-efficiency level, 240,000 Ag is the equivalent of 120 Au.

So… 540 WSP = 240,000 Ag = 120 Au = $1.20.

That means you’re spending $7.56 in WSP to get just over twice as much value in components, or to show my work it’s 3400 / 540 * 1.2.

Pixo’s valuation: Interestingly, note that Pixonic sets an “old price” (lol) of 4,900 WSP, which gives us $10.89. That doesn’t square with the valuation based on a per-Component price, but I’ve long since abandoned any expectation of this stuff lining up. It often seems that these “old price” numbers are just spun from whole cloth, and ultimately have little bearing on what the actual data shows us.

Return rate: 2.11 (ever dollar you’d spent on WSP is coming back as $2.11 in Components).

What you get: $12.50

What you pay: $8.00

Pixo’s valuation: $16.00

Return rate: 1.56

What you get: $8.50

What you pay: $5.00

Pixo’s valuation: $11.00

Return rate: 1.70

What you get: $8

What you pay: $5

Pixo’s valuation: $10.00

Return rate: 1.60

What you get: $14.58

What you pay: $9.00

Pixo’s valuation: $18.00

Return rate: 1.62

What you get: $13.00

What you pay: $8.00

Pixo’s valuation: $16.00

Return rate: 1.625

What you get: $13.50

What you pay: $9.00

Pixo’s valuation: $17.00

Return rate: 1.50

What you get: $8.50

What you pay: $4.44

Pixo’s valuation: $6.44

Return rate: 1.91

One more?

What you get: $8.00

What you pay: $4.22

Pixo’s valuation: $6.00

Return rate: 1.90

I’d originally intended to assess all the ones I saw, just for the avoidance of doubt that these examples weren’t cherry-picked to make Pixonic look better/worse, depending on what flavor of bias folks subscribe to. Turns out, there’s a fairly obvious consistency to these deals, with returns in the 1.50 to 2.0 range.

In a sense, Pixonic can make a case that not only is it meeting my challenge of a 1:1 return, but they’re in fact blowing it away. And by the metric of relative value, they’re right. 1.50 to 2.00 is a rate of return any investment broker would kill for. A return of 2.00 basically means you’re doubling your money.

Of course, that only tells part of the story. When we look at absolute value instead of relative value, you could have a rate of return of 5.00 and you still would be a far cry from making these new bots and weapons affordable to the average punter. Again, arguments for or against the pricing level are beyond the scope of this piece.

It’s fairly certain that we’ve seen the last of WSP utility. This is essentially a cash-out, like you do on vacation in a foreign land right before hopping the flight home. In light of that, I’d be much more comfortable recommending folks to take advantage of these offers provided they had all of the Stalkers, Rhinos, and quadrupeds they want.

Personally, I’d like to see Pixonic convert those bots and weapons into Components as well, to streamline a rather clunky and cumbersome system.

And even with a generous rate of return, there are some things worth pointing out that offset whatever goodwill this gesture may offer the company. For one thing, the offers are limited rather than unlimited, so you don’t have the opportunity to “cash out” wholesale in one go. While Pixonic has all the data on stockpiling at their fingertips, it’s hard to imagine the market would tank if folks could just get out of WSP’s altogether.

That concern notwithstanding, this seems a fair deal.

Especially if you’ve stuffed 160,000 WSP or so under the mattress. As one does.