Discussion: Party Pack Now Available In The NCsoft Store!

Originally Posted by McNum Between the Loyalists and Resistance, I'd be tempted to support Praetorian Hamidon. One side uses mind police and will "disappear" you and the other uses poison gas and bombs on civilians. Hamidon? He'll just have a tree eat you. Much simpler. If we're all going to be oppressed and/or killed by someone, it might as well be the walking trees. At least they don't speak in annoying code or doublespeak. They just devour you.

I get that impression as well.

I'll have a better idea once the 3Q numbers are released to see what impact GR had on sales but it does seem like they were scrambling for more revenue but didn't have anything well thought out to release so they just grabbed what they could and tried to shoehorn it into a theme.

The fact that it's $2 less than the usual pack suggests they already know it doesn't have the same value as a normal booster.

save 10 bucks by not picking a name you won't want by the next time you stare at it?

if ya wanna talk about something thats worth 10 bucks, getting 2 character slots for 10 bucks is better than paying for a name change.

Aside from that >_>;; A friend of mine bought the party back after seeing me dancing. there are plenty of people whether the people who constantly post on these threads all day realize it or not that there are those who really do use emotes often. just like a bunch have afk messages over their characters when they have to type something. It's more about how you feel about the things you do in this game and not so much about prices all the time.

im pretty sure for every 5 people who scoffed at this, there were 6 who bought it. I bought it and i am amused by it and that's more than enough for me to validate the purchase of it.

I remember when i first met my friend (one who bought the pack) he used to mix emotes together to create unique ones. i still remember the vahz walk, lol... goodtimes... goodtimes.. eh anyways. some people like using emotes and such...just like people like costume change emotes... i don't use those much but i do use them.. saying people don't use emotes often enough to validate an emote based pack is silly imo.

actually I've found a better bar stool, but.. is my seeeekrit.

I commend your self-restraint and lack of drama. Well done.


Seriously, no one is forcing you to by it. Its overpriced in my estimation too, but I'm not playing chicken little either. You know. The sky ain't falling.

Ohhhh...why did you have to post that?????? It is one thing to say I will not buy an overpriced Emote pack....but seeing your toon with it....seeing the goods up close and personal....ohhhhhhhhhhh...must rethink a bit.

Lisa-whose thought processes right now much resemble Tunnel Rat's thinking.

I already have in several previous posts.

Costumes and powers are central to character realization in CoH.
Emotes are not. So an emote pack has a smaller built in constituency than a pack centered around something with more perceived utility to the 'average player'.

Basically, everybody loves costumes, everybody loves powers, not everybody loves emotes. All else being equal, a well run hamburger joint is going to draw in more customers than a well run Lithuanian restaurant because it has a broader audience to draw from. Ditto for a booster like this one- the appeal is to a very narrow band of the playerbase.

They've set the price where they think it needs to be to realize their projected profit. You don't like the price, fair enough don't buy it. But it is what it is, and there's a reason for it.

Hmmm . . . I wonder if those Order numbers are sequential. If so, they made 30,718 transactions between your first order and your last and 58 between your last two.

Of couse, not every transaction will have been a party pack transaction. And if I recall, the store is for all NCSoft products.

But still, 30 thousand transactions in two days is pretty impressive, I think.

This can't be disputed.

/cosign

Nope, decided not to do the whole explaination of what road I see this company taking. I've done it enough times already and have decided not to correct people who are not doing their homework anymore. They just are not worth the energy.

And I think you are probably 100% correct.

I scoffed, I saw the video someone posted of his toon doing the pop dance, and now I might buy.

Chris Justice, my Kilt-wearing Fire/Energy Brute would have a ball with that Pop Dance...and my credit card is right here, and I am off today so I will not be buying lunch...hmmmm

Lisa.

Sigh. I did my homework, I was not going to buy it...but I do do emotes, and I still feel that there is a purpose behind the Devs suddenly coming out of left field and offering us a turkey booster pack when always before they have been simply splendid.

And, that Pop Dance video I saw sold me.

Lisa-Yes, I know, I am not worth the energy

Businesses are constantly irritating their customers for short term gain.
Happily, most of their customers are less prone to carrying on about the cost of goods than gamers*.

Speaking of businesses irritating customers, I weigh all such business events in light of something from the early 1990s.

I had season tickets for 2 years to the then dreadfully bad Minnesota Timberwolves. My seats were $8.50 each the first two years (nose bleed section). The second year (their third season) they finished with an NBA worst 14 wins. (I believe another team recently tied or sank lower than that.)

They jacked my prices to $12.50 a seat. Why? Because they were so sure they would snag Shaq in the lottery. They didn't. So for a few years after that apart from when Michael Jordan and the Bulls or Shaq and the Magic came to town you could pick up any nose bleed seat and move down to the lower deck because it was deserted.

Now that was a bad business decision. This doesn't even come close.

HAH!


I have a pal who is a Clipper season ticket holder, and their ticket prices seem to have an inverse relationship with their on-court performance...

I agree. I have to emphasize though that also counts EVERY electronic purchase. Not just for the packs, but for the electronic version of the game, and the all the monthly subscriptions including the "recurring" subscriptions.

That leads me to hope the player base of this game is growing and will continue to do so at least for a little while. It is nice to see so many people on the servers after all.

That, I think, is what put such a bad taste in my mouth over this "Emote Pack". At a time when you have such a huge influx of people to the game, why would you release a niche product that so few people will appreciate? Not only that, but to do it 2 weeks (or so) after the release of GR? That screams of opportunistic money grubbing to me. Now if they had released it as a freebie and put an in-game GMotD to tell everyone, just think of the good will it could have generated.

I don't have a problem with this game making money. If it didn't, we couldn't play any more and even though I do not appreciate the "new" micro-transaction model the company is taking (and am looking for a new game because of), I do want the game to continue. At least until I find another one that entertains me as much as this one does.

I am one of the people that remembers this company bragging about how they were so much different than all the other MMO's out there. How they didn't charge for additional content, and how they listen to their customers. Fact is I am not seeing a whole lot of that anymore. Maybe I am looking in the wrong places. I'm not a PvPer but that is a very good example of what I am talking about. They basically killed PvPing in Issue 13 and we are now at Issue 18 and it is still being left to rot.

I could almost agree that $8.00 isn't much money and certainly not worth worrying about to spend on this game but, that same money could be used to buy each of my two children three school lunches. I could buy an new tee-shirt, about a dozen pairs of socks, or several pounds of hamburger for dinners; so that argument just doesn't hold with me.

I can't even buy the whole argument that the "Wedding Pack" allowed them to create the VEATs. Or even that it allowed them to be made sooner. Fact is they basically had to make them since the HEATs were already out. But if I assume they were not stretching the truth when they said that, then what exactly is our monthly subscriptions paying for? I assumed that it was paying for things like salaries, offices and equipment, marketing, and continuing the evolution of the game. That last part is the most important. After all, how many players would stay more than a year or two if the game did not keep growing?

So what are these packs paying for now? I hope it is the PEATs (Praetorian Epic Arch-Types) as well as the addition of level 21-50 content in Praetoria. I hope it pays for better internal testing so the "Free" Issues are a lot less buggy on release. I even hope that they are paying for the improvement of the endgame content to come. But like I said before, isn't that the kind of stuff our monthly subscriptions are supposed to pay for?

OK, this is my last "rant". Though rant isn't the right word. I'm just too tired right now to have the energy to rant. Don't bother thinking you'll be getting rid of me anytime soon though. The last time I renewed my subscription, I used up the last of my blind trust in this company by paying for an entire year up front.

Your previous posts didn't make much sense either. They have a profit target? A limit on how much money they wish to make? That's absurd.

This isn't exactly aimed at a niche. A niche would be the AV Club, but this has sports emotes for the jocks, dance emotes for the preppies and airguitar for the headbangers. That was pretty much my whole school. A niche would be 8 soccer emotes. If they have any business sense, they're appalled at the poor reception and will do better for future sales. Mark my words.

Jer

Yes, i believe that's why companies that can, jump on the microtransaction bandwagon.

If they divide it into a small enough purchase, people are more likely to justify over paying, whether they realize it or not.

For me, i have difficulty with that because when i visualize combining the features of any 4 of the boosters ($40) worth and comparing that to another $40 purchase say GR complete (retail box) with the 30days free, i get a nasty twinge in my wallet.

( Actually it was $30 for me, took advantage of the BestBuy.com $10 discount )

Overall however, not sure how much of an impact these packs are having to sales. At most it might just minimize the drop.

[edit] Not sure about GR yet, have to wait till 3Q numbers are out then wait till February for 4Q to see if it has any lasting effects. [/edit]

It didn't.
What it did do is create the financial resources to finish it up ahead of schedule and add it to whatever issue they were releasing, instead of having development drag on for some indeterminate time.

And given how long some stuff languished in Dev Purgatory in the old days, that was a not inconsiderable benefit to the playerbase.

If they project that 12% of the playerbase would be interested in Project X they can look at the costs of Project X and come up with a price that will generate the profit they need to justify going forward.


Pricing Project X less will not necessarily result in enough extra sales to make the project viable because only a small % of their customer base will be interested it as anything but a free perk of their sub.


It isn't that complicated.

Uhm... good for you?
<shrug>