Can the Rioter who's dictating pricing please tell us how much you think a banana costs?

How many characters does slay the spire have?

How much do you think slay the spire's art costs to create?

How many adventures exist in slay the spire?

Slay the Spire was made by about 10 people. It was made as a standalone game and got some updates. It is a buy2play game with no free version, and it stopped coming out with new content. Even a mega-successful hit like Slay the Spire with much cheaper production costs stopped making new content for their game pretty fast.

The original 12 champions with their 3 stars for the current version of Path still exist. You can get those champions and their first 3 stars pretty easily for free. If you buy one of the starter bundles that costs like $5-$10 you're paying less than Slay the Spire's full price for like 5 characters already at 2 stars each. Slay the spire has 4 characters and costs $25.

Path of Champions is a much bigger game with much more expensive art than Slay the Spire. It also gives away a huge amount of that game for free. The content it launched with, the first 3 stars and 30 levels, is easier to experience for free than ever right now.

Slay the Spire is a fantastic game. It is also much cheaper to make and costs $25 for 4 characters, with no option to unlock them for free. Think of stars 4+ as "bonus content" in TPOC, it's not like Slay the Spire has a star progression system anyway. Just play characters up to 3 stars for free and take anytheing beyond 4 stars at its own pace.

I'll settle for the Slay the Spire knockoff being a normal price.

I compared LoR to the $25 game you specifically compared it to. Last I checked, $25 is between $5 and $60.

Slay the Spire is an amazing game. It also costs $25 and offers just 4 characters.

How many characters does TPOC have? How easy is it to unlock just 4 of them for less than $25?

Slay the Spire was made by about 10 people. Do you know how many people have worked on LoR? At one point it was over 100.

You brought up the comparison, so let's compare. LoR has a lot more content and was much more expensive to make. You can also experience a huge amount of that content for free.

If we're comparing apples to apples, Slay the Spire charges $25 for 4 apples and then packs up shop. LoR gives you 3 apples for free, gives you 3 more apples for free while you're still eating the first apples, and then continues to give you free apples regularly. If you want even more apples or a REALLY BIG apple right now then cool, you can pay a high price to help subsidize the other free apples. Otherwise you can decide you're satisfied with what you have, or move on to other games with nothing lost.

If you're going to complain about what you get in LoR for the cost vs what you get in Slay the Spire, why won't you answer these questions:

How many characters total are in LoR? How about Slay the Spire?

How many characters can you get for $25 or less in LoR? How about Slay the Spire?

Do you think the art, animation, and voice acting in LoR is higher quality and production value than Slay the Spire's?

Seems like if you answered those questions, you'd end up admiting how much more content at higher visual quality for free in LoR than STS charges you $25 for.

If Path released as a stand-alone buy2play game, it'd probably cost $40 and look like it did at launch: Just 12 champions that max at 3 stars. No adventure past Galio. Is that a better deal for players?

Slay the Spire doesn't have a story mode. If we're comparing to Slay the Spire's $25 for value, we still need to compare apples to apples. Path of Champions has a lot more story than Slay the Spire does.

The $40 cost vs $25 is based on the much bigger amount of content, cards, adventures, archetypes, and expensive voice interactions, FX, etc. Games with higher production budgets naturally cost more. If the price was $25, you'd have to cut the production budget significantly. That'd mean fewer characters or a cheaper art style and little voice acting.

If you want to say "$40 for just the base tpoc at launch version doesn't sound as good as what we have now" I agree. That's the tradeoff we're talking about.