We Paid for These Paragon Points, Mr. Positron

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yeah.
I am reaching a point where I am not sure if I want to MMO. So a little nudge one way or another may be enough for me.

Depending on how all of this shakes out, I may or may not re-up my sub when it comes up next year. I'll be tier 9 when it expires, so I don't lose anything and can keep playing indefinitely w/ only some modification.

I can say from past experience with me that I am willing to go through irrational lengths to support businesses I like and to avoid giving money to businesses I do not like.

The assertion by the reps that we will get our stuff on bill date and that they are working to get us stuff on bill date. I think that's where anyway.

Yeah, one of those rep posts is quoted in the OP you read.

Why is it more important to you that it happens on your bill date than that it happens a month after it previously happened? Honest question.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Wow. Just...wow.

That issue really isn't mine.

The only thing close to that particular issue I have is that it seems unnecessarily complicated. Unnecessary complications in monetary systems ... well they tend to be dodgy. So I have become suspicious.


But, if you notice, my main issue has been the fact that I won't get as much from my money as I would have if I hadn't given it to the game already--not because it's gone on sale subsequently or something similar, but simply because the company won't deliver the goods to me as quickly. I am talking about the delay in delivering the points from the subscription I have already paid for.

It seems like a counter-intuitive way for a business to treat me.

I'll have to go with "this"...

I don't know when my renewal date is either....I do the 3 month billing cycle so...no idea....

You're confused because you're looking at trivialities and not the big picture.

This month a technical problem gains them some extra impulse purchases.

Next month they'll have another excuse and another piece of content to lure in the impulse buyers.

By February they'll have cranked through the data and they'll know when to release things for maximum profit (hint: It'll be the first of the month, because that's just before most long-term player's start day of the 4th, which was release day) and they'll know how long to leave things on sale.

By next summer they'll introduce yet another currency, or another wait-for-points plan, or something else that ultimately will give them a marginal increase in profits. Three months after that, they'll do it again. And again. And again.

It's not about any specific event. It's all about keeping the players off-balance so that they are unable to budget their money and their time. This makes more money flow toward the game.

It started with the bait-and-switch they pulled when they went back on their promise of giving all the points for a subscription on the initial renewal date. From here it will only get worse, more devious, and more difficult to understand and plan for.

Maybe. Maybe Paragon Studios hasn't succumbed to the evils of gamification and microtransactions, and all the shady coincidences so far have just been accidents. But every time these coincidences happen it looks a little worse. It is making me lose confidence in a company I once trusted.

It's an agenda thing - it happened with the introduction of the Incarnate Trials too - with the same results

Maybe the next item in the market will be tinfolil hats?

You get me Tin Foil armor for my tank and I will buy it!

Yet if you're late paying your bill, you drop down to Premium (in days of yore, your subscription would flat out be canceled until you made a payment).

This is pretty much the exact reason why the devs never speak in definites and use the word "soon" so it shouldn't be unexpected that people are upset that they're not getting something when they were told they would.

Also, I'm starting to think that Marketing = Nemesis.

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Okay, but how about the extra 400 points we got, included with the launched promise of 3 months' worth?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

What about it? What's your question? Can you restate it?

So you're saying that next month, they'll delay by another 10 days? Or are you saying that because it's on the 10th next month, that's "evil?"

So you're saying that the point was to gather all people's Stipends on the same day so that they can release new shop items ten days earlier? And they needed "nefarious schemes" to achieve this instead of simply appointing a game-wide stipend date because? Seriously, if Paragon Studios had said "Everyone will receive his or her monthly stipend on the 15th of every month." would that have been "evil," too? Because - surprise of surprised - that's precisely how my employer pays me my salary. That's exactly how my cable company requests I pay my bills.

In fact, here's an anecdote - when I swapped cable companies, I got my cable installed around the 10th of that month, and I paid for that month. Thing is, "that month" ends on the 25th, which is when I'm expected to pay my bill, so for the first month of my subscription, I got 15 days of cable TV. Every month thereafter, I'd pay my bill on the 25th and have my cable paid up until the 25th next month. I guess my cable company is "evil?"

Or maybe that's an incredibly stupid thing to say. Or maybe Paragon Studios is run by aliens who have implanted a chip in my brain so that I would accept their every decision. Or maybe I'm not real. The possibilities are endless.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

City of Heroes released on April 28, 2004 (A few sites incorrectly list it as April 27, 2004). It did not release on the 4th as you claim. My sub renews near the end of the month as it always has, not near the beginning of the month.

You may want to check your "facts" before posting things like that. It makes the rest of your post look suspect.

You mean it's a =profit= deal?

<gasp>

--NT

That must mean that he's trying to trick us out of money in some way.

So... If I understand you right you paid for a year and instead of getting points and tokens every month you want a years worth upfront?

Originally by Arcanaville: Everything in Praetoria was designed during a drinking binge in which the devs temporarily forgot the rules.

How are you calculating that? Are you saying that three months from now, you will expect to have 1200 points but will instead have 800, but three months and five days from now you'll have 1200, and that's "not as much money" as opposed to "just as much money a few days later?"

As for impulse purchases... If I toss a hundred off a bridge and a beggar leaps after it to his death, am I responsible?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Except at that point these impulse shoppers will have their stipend payment for the previous month, assuming they didn't burn it up on whiskey and whores (or XP boosters and team insps, as the case may be ). They may well have spent those points, but that is due to them being impulsive, not Paragon Studios nefariously releasing awesome stuff ten days early. Put another way, impulsive spenders with attractive purchase options will always run themselves bingo on points, regardless of the release schedule of said purchase options.

Sure!
How does them giving us more points at launch than they told us they would factor into wanting us to have less points sooner?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

they were trying to do that, currently they are having technical issues getting it to work, but they are active working on it.(as per tec's thread on the topic.)

EDIt oops, just tokens, not points.

::blink::

So, wait, you are saying that it wasn't the rest of the post making the rest of the post look suspect?

With or without that line, the whole post looked suspect to me.

Whoops. My start date was May 4th -- I thought I was there at launch, but it looks like I was about a week later. My mistake.

So they'll probably deliver new content items on the 15th of each month. Whatever is the best time that their data tells them for grabbing those impatient buyers.