Discussion: Featured Items at the Paragon Market - 2/14/12

I would imagine when they announced the contents of the Super Packs.

This is a question with so obvious an answer that I suspect there's some specific reason for asking it which is totally unrelated to the actual answer to the question.

As long as you can't say how many points the Elemental Order costume set costs, my statement that it isn't clear how much the costume actually costs remains valid.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

So your saying the devs don't lie? I point you towards Positrons statement towards i13 that multiple people have quote in their signatures and is famous here on these boards especially with the pvp crowd no matter how small.

Not really. The only ambiguity was whether or not they mentioned that to the NDA-bound focus group, since you brought it up.

No.

Revealed publicly probably when the Super Packs were announced. Technically speaking anything and everything shown to players during the focus group was subject to change without notice or warning, much like things shown in closed betas.

What was revealed at the focus group was that the Super Packs were coming, they were going to have randomly selected "cards" in them, the cards would award certain rewards, and among those rewards would be consumable items. It was highly unlikely any of that would change.

The first and last change I heard about with regard to the Super Packs from the time of the focus group until when they were released was that they were going to be delayed, and therefore all information about them could not be discussed prior to their announcement.

To anticipate a question, it was never specifically stated whether the Super Packs would have rewards exclusive to them, but the devs implied that to be a possibility.

Since you raise that question, how did they imply that?

By asking questions about what would, and would not be acceptable to sell in the store. Exclusive items came up during at least some of the discussion (parts of the day the group was separated into different groups discussing different things with different devs: its possible different people heard different things during those discussion periods due to this fact).

My apologies.

Interesting.

That's actually Ms. 27,000 posts. But your decision is wise.

It used to be $15 bought you the game and powersets. Then you started having to pay $10 for costumes too.

These days your $15 still pays for the game and powersets. Except some powersets cost extra. But now costumes cost less. And the real kicker is you get a free $5 every month to spend on stuff. So in theory you don't have to "buy" costumes and powersets if you pace yourself. And overall, I've found the flow of costume parts to be much more acceptable.

But when we start complicating it with random factors like item packs and other stuff that's where it can get iffy. It used to be more straightforward. Pay $15 to play, and $10 for costumes. The places they hide things these days though are like an Easter Egg hunt.

In theory you could put your $5 toward super boosters. But I'd rather get predictable returns and just buy costume packs.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

That's actually in-game right now along with them being tradeable on the market. I think the only real thing we're missing at the moment is them being a T9 reward and I think they said that would be in I22 during the ustream earlier today.

And my statement that you're desperately reaching remains. You're implying with that statement that they're somehow deceiving the customer, which is utter ( udder? ) BS.

It's hardly active deception, but letting Paragon Studios off the hook with "let the buyer beware" is just handwaving.

If the Super Packs are going to be discussed properly, then it will be necessary to introduce such fascinating topics as risk-reward ratios in probability distribution, The Coupon Collector's Problem, The Gambler's Fallacy, The Sunk Cost Fallacy, etc., etc. (to say nothing of the psychological roots of compulsive attraction in games of chance). There's a reason the Lotto is sometimes called "the tax on the innumerate".

Since I don't have either the mathematical background or the hard data to analyze the Super Packs in their current form, there's no way I'm going to spend money on playing the odds on top of spending money to play City of Heroes.

I have to agree with this also. It is not readily apparant how many parts make a complete costume, nor how many pieces I have left to obtain. Additionally, I would want the ability to trade with others to obtain what I need, or even trade in 3-5 commons to get a common I want, or downgrading (similar to the incarnate system to further obtain all costume parts).

Any changes that would allow me more control to obtain the items I specifically want will go a long way toward having me even consider purchasing such packs.

This seems like a good idea - it would increase the 'completionist' aspect of the cards, which would (I suspect) tend to further the interest in buying them.

This, on the other hand, dives right into the problem of purchasable INF. If a player can purchase something with real-world money, and then turn immediately around and sell it on the Market for a gain in INF, that's essentially just laundering one currency into another. There are pros and cons to this, of course, but as far as I know, the Devs have always come out dead-set against this sort of thing. Being able to sell cards to another player is not complex, obscure or at a great remove... it's tatamount to paying real world currency for INF in a very direct way.
It has, of course, been suggested that an official source for purchasable INF would essentially destroy RTM operations, and this system would allow the players to set the price point (by determining what the cards were worth in the open Market). I don't know enough economic theory to know if that's a good idea or a bad one, though, so I'm not offering an opinion on that. I'm just saying that the Dev team have always seemed very resistant any cash-for-INF system.
(I'm assuming that you're suggesting the cards be allowed as tradable items in the Market - a direct card-for-card seperate system would mitigate these concerns, but would be a lot of work.)

To late merits are already something in super packs which buys IOs and can be sold on the market for influence and ATOs can also be traded on the market.

Though I will add the devs did a good job not actually selling influence cause with all this supply suddenly prices are in fact dropping on just about everything worth while from what I've seen.

Ah, I had been under the impression that the Super Pack ATO's were non-tradable. In reviewing, it's just the Enhanced (Purple) versions that are not marketable. Thank you for correcting me on this.

Well, then, given that they've already breached that wall, I would suggest they they make the cards themselves tradable. Perhaps reset the flag operations for the costume set so that a player would have to actively claim the costume pieces to stop getting them in subsequent packs. Or allow Null to flip the switch on that... that way, players interested in marketing the costume pieces could continue to receive them after getting them. This would also have the effect of breaking the exclusivity of the EO pieces and thus remove my primary objection to the Packs.

Win-win! (All except for those people who don't like to watch other people get nice things...)

Note: No, I don't think this is likely to happen.

I guess they aren't quite that morally bankrupt.

But the question is would you rather get predictable and less rewards, or unpredictable and on average more rewards, with the chance you may get less than average, and more importantly would you sentence all of the rest of the playerbase to the same fate.

There are players that say NCSoft is losing money on the Super Packs because if they simply sold all the elements separately, more people would buy the individual elements. That's possible, but psychologically speaking the smart money is betting that they are making more money on the Super Packs because for every person electing not to spend money on them, another player is more than compensating by spending a lot more on them than they would spend on buying the individual items in a targeted fashion. That's the nature of these things, and its been generally true in most environments where such things are bundled and sold.

Less revenue means less game, for everyone. So the problem with saying that predictable is better is that that is not the whole choice. The choice is really is predictability worth costing everyone less content, and conversely is having more content worth introducing unpredictable rewards. That's the decision the devs face here. Its not a straight forward decision.

Sorry to jump back into this thread a bit blind, but this statement seems to ignore the dominant request of players who were disappointed with the super packs. I repeatedly requested that they offer the costume pieces in addition to the super packs (even without a bundle value, priced solely individually). Give me a) the chance to buy what I want and avoid the random mill (choosing take certainty over value) or b) let me have a way of finishing the costume set individually if, partaking in the super packs, i am left without what I want. he latter is especially important to me. I would buy super packs if I could finish the costume set with certainty.

The dominant discussion was never super packs or no super packs. The dominant discussion was exclusivity v. nonexclusivity.

Personally, I don't think super packs are hurting them. But they may limiting the success by not offering the costume pieces individually in addition to the super packs. And, furthermore, they may hurt themselves in a long run by turning off players who collect costume pieces but are turned off by super packs.

I don't think the success of super packs will be in question. The success of exclusivity, however, is an unanswerable question.

Well let's put it this way: Wizards of the Coast has been a very successful gaming company for the last 20 years based on this generic "collectible card game" model. My simplistic guess is that if it worked for them it'll work out for Paragon Studios too.

And I'll even offer up myself for anecdotal evidence for this line of thinking. I bought 96 packs on Tuesday. While I had fun getting all the ATOs and catalysts and what-not I'll honestly admit that I really wanted the silly Black Wolf Pet at least as much as any of the rest of it. Sadly I did not get it.

While I was busy -not- getting the Wolf I bought each of my 96 packs in four lots of 24 each, one lot at a time. Now if by some miracle I had gotten the Black Wolf in the first or second set of 24 I think I can also readily admit that I probably would've stopped there. In effect that cursed Wolf basically "motivated" me to get another 48 packs just on the chance I might get it.

I've since sold off many of the extra ATOs I got for billions of Influence so it's not like I didn't benefit from the extra packs I bought. But I'll freely congratulate Paragon Studios' business savvy for providing a situation that got me to give them an extra $30. I don't believe their decision to keep the Elemental costume set "exclusive" to the packs will hurt them in the least.

I know the way another competing company handles their equivalent to Super Packs that contain exclusive costume rewards is that you are 'gauranteed' to get a customer piece with each pack purchased, while the other rewards are random.

What this would mean is that those that want the costumed bundle will have to purchase one pack for each of the costumed pieces made in order to get the entire set.

The more pieces a costumed set has, the more packs a consumer will have to buy. This means the bigger sets will cost more appropriately.

...and you'll still get the random rewards that come with buying a pack.

My answer to the first question is: yes. I am more than willing to pay more and be certain than gamble on a method that might cost me less.

As to the second part, I would prefer to give every player the option of doing one or the other, and thus not force anyone in either direction.

My contention is that they could make even more money by offering a sure buy at a (probably) higher cost. This would also result in fewer angered players, which I would have to assume is better for the bottom line.
I don't object to the Packs existing, I just don't care to buy them myself.

It certainly isn't a straightforward decision - that's one reason I'm dismayed they've already made it (We have no plans to release the EO pieces in any other manner) so early in the process.