(Open letter) To marketing: Pre-order goodies.
By
Calash,
Posted on: 2009-12-13 19:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Well, like I said earlier - this is to marketing (and to a degree, NCSoft, the publisher), not the devs/Paragon Studios.
And there's no telling how much of what's happened with Champions and will happen with Star Trek is Cryptic and how much is Atari. I'll give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt on that count - they do have to do what their owners say do, yes?
Quote:
When I say 'Cryptic', I mean whoever is making those decisions. Whoever it is; they should be shot.|
Originally Posted by Psyte
Well, like I said earlier - this is to marketing (and to a degree, NCSoft, the publisher), not the devs/Paragon Studios.
And there's no telling how much of what's happened with Champions and will happen with Star Trek is Cryptic and how much is Atari. I'll give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt on that count - they do have to do what their owners say do, yes? |
Yeah I know, I need to word my posts better >.>
[CENTER]Euro side: [B]@Orion Star[/B] & [B]@Orions Star[/B][/CENTER]
Ah, sorry. I know a LOT of people who think Cryptic still makes COH. And from the folks who know they aren't anymore? They didn't know Atari bought them. Sorry about that!
And did I mention...
Quote:
I agree with this?
|
Originally Posted by Orion_Star_EU
Considering Euro folk never had a shot at any of the prestige sprints (aside from Slide, and some accounts randomly had Quick applied to them), and only had a single Arachnos helmet available, I think it was a good idea to include them in the Vetwards.
|
I hate pre-order bonuses because Europe often gets left out as all of the interesting pre-order bonuses are only available in North America. Plus we have no franchise stores where I live, so unless pre-orders are done through Amazon.co.uk or Play.com I cant get them.
I don't mind Collector's Editions having minor in-game items - then I can make a judgement call if it's worth the extra cash and I have a fair chance of getting one - but pre-order bonuses just feel like a tacky con, trying to get you to buy a product that hasn't been reviewed yet (although with MMO releases there's always open beta I guess, considering that it gets used only as a free trial opportunity nowadays).
When I see a company like Cryptic throwing around so many pre-order bonuses and only offering lifetime subs before official release it just smacks of desperation to make a quick profit selling extra copies, and actually turns me away from buying the game. A good MMO will sell itself, it doesn't need tacky gimmicks to trick buyers into getting it. Why can't they have a little faith in the quality of their product? Oh, yeah...
All the CoH PO bonuses were mechanically identical, and in turn, they are all mechanically identical to sprint, so they do not offer any real advantage.
For CoV, it's just 4 very niche helmets that I rarely see used - again, no advantage.
For GR, I'm pretty sure we'll see something similar. Perhaps even a single PO bonus for all retailers (we can hope, eh?
The trend I'm seeing is that anything that grants an actual advantage (barring vetwards) is *always* going to be available from the NC store, and I hope it stays that way. Most cosmetic stuff is available there too, but some stuff has become ungettable unless some CE stock is found in a random store in Alaska.
Cryptic on the other hand have been, and are continuing to be, complete ******** when it comes to exclusives and perks (especially time limited ones), just see their 37 different pre order bonuses, microtransaction store, limited availability lifetime sub, and even items exclusive to some blu-ray re-release (Oh and look, that's time limited too! Yay!).
It's that kind of behaviour that just sends up a red flag stating "Please don't do business with us!" for me to be honest. The fact that their games suck (so far) and some of their CS staff are completely rude and unprofessional don't help either, though.
*By 'devs' I mean the marketing department (that supposedly hate us
[CENTER]Euro side: [B]@Orion Star[/B] & [B]@Orions Star[/B][/CENTER]