Snow Globe

According to Zwillinger, no. They aren't looking into alternate animations at this point.

And they are making exactly how much money from something that costs nothing to produce after the contest/event/promotion is over. They are saying "no" to revenue. They give away a couple hundred codes and then sell several thousand of the same items. Does it cost any more capital to produce the thousand codes? No.

There is literally zero production cost for something that can make the company money beyond the promotion period. In fact, because of the giveaways, they get further advertising for the item so people can buy the items.

You really don't get it do you? A costume pack = $ for Paragon Studios. They wouldn't be an in-game unlock.

That would cost them far more of their loyal fan base than they could ever hope to get back with any promotion. They do that, and they might as well find new jobs because they wouldn't have any subscriber base.

There is a term for those people: Poor winners.

As you can see, the definition fits.

I asked this question of the community team before in this very thread:
As you can see, I already recognized the jerks that would complain that someone else had to pay for something they got for free. Then again, this is one of the reasons casual people still avoid PVP to this day.

No, promotions that use permanently exclusive items annoy the people paying their salaries. That is the bottom line. You don't deliberately annoy your loyal customers to the point where they cease to be customers.

Well, I'm glad I'm not alone. However that doesn't exactly make me feel any better given the other NCsoft/NCsoft Austin decisions (Paragon Points/Paragon Reward Tokens/Server Transfer Tokens awarding haphazardly).

You really don't want me reading between those lines.

Not really. I've noticed only one difference on both completely successful or where 2/4 have failed their roles for the heist

Cutscene -> preform roles -> 20 thugs -> AV -> cutscene -> preform roles -> 20 thugs -> AV -> Special AV.

If you didn't do well, you might not get the last AV.

They can fail their tasks in the heist, but all that means is that you don't get that badge during that run.

It is so far "off the radar" as to be in another galaxy... in a different dimension.

I tried disabling all my chrome extensions. No dice. It is as if the website version has incorrectly lost my account info while it is still available in-game.

I am fortunate enough to have a decent connection, my friend doesn't all the time and he suggested it. Some nights he logs in and logs right back out because the game is unplayable.

The market interface is a simple web client. It makes a call to a specific set of pages located on the NCsoft server. How do I know this? During the Issue 21 open beta people were able to surf to google with the market window. I wasn't in the closed beta, but I expect it was possible there too.

As to auto refresh, I know it doesn't. You'd have to close the window and reopen it. Then again, that suggestion relied on the fact that it didn't refresh. A player couldn't just keep refreshing in-game and stumble on the secret sale item. As to limiting the time, I know that is already a function of the market. We've had how many time limited sales since last September?

Yes, that goes along with the fact that the market window is a simple web client. I'm not sure what that has to do with your point though.

Again, your point?

Because it is a web page that requires a lot of confirmation that you should be allowed to access the market. It also doesn't cache the banners so that would be even more data needing to be sent.

I've been programming since elementary school. I started programming in 1981. I think I'm more than qualified to make a judgement call on programming.

Yes. I instantly grokked how much work the current change would do. I also understood what this would do to future contests of this type: completely kill any community team motivation to do them.

I think the community team took the wrong thing away from this thread. The core over the dissatisfaction over this (and any other) contest is the non-limited exclusivity.

Someone at Paragon Studios loves to have exclusive content. This clearly shows in their willingness to continually annoy their customers with open-ended exclusives. Their customers have repeatedly given feedback since the CoH CE that they are annoyed with open-ended exclusives. All I have to do is take a look back at the Wal-Mart deal with the Good vs Evil edition. What a <censored>-storm that was.

This applies to all of the following (but not limited to them):

• Collector Edition bonuses
• Tier 9 Paragon Rewards
• Super Packs
• Social Media Promotions
• Themed Packs

[Edit]

What should be done about this? Permanent exclusives should not exist in the game. Every exclusive item should come with the provision that the item will be exclusive for a limited time and will be available on the market later. Wasn't the main selling point of CoH: Freedom that players have a choice? Permanent exclusives limit that choice.

[/Edit]

Had this been in place, the first-come, only-served nature of the Twitter giveaway would be a non-issue. As it stands with the current situation, nobody really wins. More to the point, everyone loses. The players lose out on future cool items like the auras. The community team loses time to do more giveaways and future opportunities for contests like this.

Tl;DR summation:

If the company wants exclusives as incentives, they should use them. However those exclusives should come with a built-in expiry date that is shared. After the expiry date, they should be widely available and not limited any more.

Not what I was saying. The web team for Paragon Studios is non-existent, yes. I was talking about their market, which their market provider should have, you know, provided.

It would be better than 20 one-shot codes thrown out like chum. It would be less labor intensive than the current solution, and the community team can be on during different times.

I know that, but with a mix of times, there should be times when people aren't working.

Erm, yeah... you can't get this aura on the market.

They can't... They don't have the tech, apparently. Yeah, I don't get that either.

Okay, after discussing the situation with friends, here is an alternate method that is less labor intensive:

• Put the item on the market, for 0 points and for 5-10 minutes from the announcement.
• Do NOT put it in an obvious place like "paragon picks", or at least not on the front page.
• Announce the surprise item "sale" on Twitter.

This has many benefits:

• Far less labor intensive for the community team.
• No need to worry about player region.
• Utilize existing store functions that I know you have access to.
• Many happy customers.
• Only 1 code per game account.
• No resale of codes.

It also has a couple drawbacks:

• Players can stumble upon the market item without going to the social network.
• Word of mouth may let the item go to people that don't go to the network.
• It doesn't get people to create a twitter account to follow you, but then again, neither did the screenshot of the codes.
• People at work during the contest times can't log into the game (okay, most people working these times can't).

If you've talked about this already, sorry. I'm just trying to help make more people happy, including the Community Team.

I really wish I could help you (100% serious here). Given the response, I would guess that you have a lot of followers on twitter (great!).

I mainly use Google Chrome these days and I'm not getting a warning unless I try to go to secure.plaync.com

Do any of you have Aion or Lineage accounts? I don't.

I'm a bit confused here... Why would I need to create a new account when I already have both an email & username on my account? (And I just checked my Titan Key settings).

Forcing players to re-register and then go through and reset all their info seems to be a bit backward when you already have the information.