Hopeling

But tokens aren't a promotion. They're an integral part of the system. If you want to make it an analogy, you could compare it to those frequent-buyer cards where you get a free haircut for every 5 you buy (or whatever), and you can be sure that the company is accounting for the freebies they're giving out when they set their prices. This still isn't a great analogy, since frequent-buyer rewards generally require repeat business (as the name implies), while you can easily earn a reward token (or multiple tokens) with a single purchase.
So really, can we please stop trying to draw analogies, especially to things that are not particularly analogous, and talk about the actual situation, instead of some other situation that kinda vaguely resembles this one?

People spend money specifically to gain access to t9 costumes. There is no way to gain access to t9 costumes without spending money. If something can only be acquired by spending money, it is not free. Period. I don't want to have to quote the dictionary here, but really, this cannot be disputed. Things that cost money to obtain, that cannot be obtained without a monetary cost, are not free. It's baffling that I even have to argue this.

The cost of Celestial is somewhat murky to begin with, since tokens can't be purchased separately. It should be no surprise that it will vary from person to person, as well. So yes, you're correct that the cost varies. Still, some of the tokens so purchased have gone to benefits other than Celestial, so it's not quite accurate to include them fully in Celestial's cost, either.

Tokens are not free. They are part of the purchase, and cannot be purchased separately, and thus are difficult to assign a definite value to, but as you referred to yourself, some people spent $100 or more specifically to get the tokens. If people have to spend money to get it, it is not free. Its cost is also not the full amount they spent, since they got other things for that money as well, but it is not free. It is somewhere in between "free" and "$15 per token". I have estimated the value at about 400 points (not to be confused with $5, since $5 of points also gets you partway to a reward token). If you would like to counter with your own estimate and reasoning for that value, do so, and we can discuss it. But "free" is not a valid estimate, no more than it would be valid to say that Incarnate content is free, and SSAs are free, and all VIP features are free yet still add up to $15 monthly somehow.

Didn't I say I wouldn't post again on this topic? Crap.

Edit: to fix quote tags

Right, because the cereal prize wasn't specifically marketed as a reward for long-term loyal cereal buyers. It was just some random prize. And you're correct that cereal prizes are a negligible part of the cost of the cereal.

Neither of these things are true for Celestial and reward tokens, respectively.

Celestial is not free. It costs reward tokens, which cost money. Of course, it's silly to say that reward tokens are $15 each, because you get lots of other things with a month's subscription or from the points you buy. It's equally silly to claim they cost $0. They cost somewhere in between. The precise amount is of course debatable, but 400 points (the point value of the lowest-point-value and most-widely-usable repeatable) seems like a pretty decent estimate, by which measure Celestial is 1200 points.

Most of all, you're completely failing to address the argument that undermining player confidence in VIP perks when we have frequent threads about whether VIP perks are worthwhile, when the game runs on a business model specifically focused around players paying for a VIP subscription, is just a poor business move.

But anyway, I really do not care enough to continue to debate the exact price point they should be if the alternate method is hypothetically just putting it in the market for points, so I'm not going to post on the matter again. Have the last word, if you like.

Perhaps I've communicated poorly.
Circle of Thorns, Barbarian, Steampunk, Gunslinger were all added at or near i21 release. None of these sets are free. Steampunk costs less now than when it was first introduced, but that's because the original bundle included the steam jump and the emotes.
Personally, I bought a bunch of points to get Celestial. Not so I could have it IMMEDIATELY, but so I could have it AT ALL, because I was a good 12 tokens away, and the publicly announced plan at the time was that Celestial would only be around for a few months. Going by the best info available, the set was going into the vault before I could obtain it from vet time alone, and it was not clear when it would come back OUT of the vault, or even that it definitely ever would. There was certainly no mention that I would be able to obtain it for a tiny fraction of the cost by waiting. So yes, that would have affected my decision.

But moreover, I'm not talking about people buying their way up to t9. I'm talking about the players that are already at t9, that spent the tokens on Celestial instead of other things that they could have spent tokens on, which have a direct point value, namely the t9 repeatables.

Would 1200 points be too much for a previously-entirely-exclusive costume bundle? I don't think so, no, especially since one can buy individual costume pieces, so someone who wants just the wings (or whatever) can spend even less. There's a thread over in City Life right now asking for that exact thing with Fire & Ice, so clearly there's a demand.

Of course, we have no idea yet what the alternate method will be. It might not be sold for points at all, and if it is, the price is certainly not yet determined. But I'm saying that offering the set as a special perk for long-term loyalty, then making it available to anyone for a fraction of the price it had as a special bonus perk, badly undermines its "special VIP perk/incentive" function. It replaces the feeling of "I get awesome benefits for my loyalty" with "I get ripped off for my loyalty".
Or, if the whole set is going to sell for 400 points, future t9 sets should cost 1 token, not 3. That would be acceptable to me, too.

For an account in tier 9, a reward token can be redeemed for about 750 points worth of repeatables. Even if we use the lowest-value repeatable for comparison (5x Super Packs, ~400 points), that's still effectively spending ~1200 points on Celestial.

So yeah, 400 points for the whole Celestial set seems a bit low, unless the t9 VIPs this was supposed to be a reward for are supposed to pay an early adopter's fee for it. I'm all for ending the exclusivity eventually, but giving it away cheaper than I got it in the first place isn't quite fair either.

You both get the boost. Hence the "shared XP" icon.
I think there's an "accept/refuse" window. Not sure, though. If you use your single-use power that cost points on another player without figuring out if they can use it first... well, that would be stupid, but I'm not sure it's really Paragon's problem. I could log in right now, claim and activate a Windfall or Prestige Booster or XP booster, and sit in my base for an hour, gaining no benefit, but it takes some mental gymnastics to construe that as a flaw in the mechanics rather than my behavior while knowing how the powers work.

Then go ask for it in this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=288554
However, clarification may not be possible (yet), since as of 4-24, Hit Streak said they were still deciding what the alternate method would be.

This. I wouldn't mind the current somewhat-clunky teleport for long-distance travel if it wasn't ALSO near-useless for combat movement. A much faster, cheaper, but shorter-range self teleport for combat would totally fix that problem.

That's pretty much why I like it. When I want complex and interesting mechanics, I play a video game. I prefer tabletop gaming to be mostly about the story, with mechanics that work easily and don't get in the way. M&M seems pretty streamlined.

...but like I said, that's just my opinion from having read the rulebooks and trying to imagine what it would be like compared to the games I have played, I've never actually run or played in an M&M game. Maybe once I figure out how to get 36 hours in day, I'll put together a campaign...