Discussion: Featured Items at the Paragon Market - 2/14/12
By
2short2care,
Posted on: 2012-02-14 10:50 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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By that line of thinking almost all advertising is predatory. Any advertiser worth his or her salt is going to use psychological tricks to get people to buy their products. |
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
Being predatory doesn't necessarily involve misleading people. However these packs do exploit some player's weakness (psychological "thrill" of opening surprizes) or vulnerabilities (trying to fit in when others have "the cool stuff", and costumes, ATOs, and the wolf all fit with this).
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Is Procter and Gamble predatory for putting Tide in orange packaging, knowing that the color is eye catching and likely to draw people to the product on the store shelves?
Is Coca-Cola predatory for showing ice cold glasses of bubbling soda in their commercials on hot days, knowing that, psychologically, it's going to make people thirsty for a Coke?
Is every car company in the world predatory by showing cool, beautiful people driving their cars, knowing that the viewers want to feel cool and beautiful too, and therefore might want to buy that car?
What you call predation, the rest of the world calls marketing.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
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Largely because:|
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
The point is that a lot of others and WotC themselves tried to repeat the success using nearly identical formulas, but very few managed to survive. Just being a CCG is not enough to be a commercial success. On the contrary, most CCGs weren't.
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- Most of the games from the post-Magic CCG boom were cheap cash-in attempts after the fact (not even conceived until well after Magic was already a juggernaut) with little quality in either the production or the gameplay.
- The market was flooded with CCGs; consumer dollars and attention were stretched extremely thin.
- They were all trying to compete with a game whose name was basically synonymous with its own industry (Magic). I preferred Netrunner to Magic, personally, but I ended up playing Magic far, far more (and spending far, far more money on it as a consequence) simply because there were exponentially more people to play it with. It's the same reason Google+ is failing to overtake Facebook, despite how much Facebook users whine about Facebook: that place over there may arguably be better, but all my friends are already here.
I'm not sure any of those apply specifically to "collectible cards" within the context of CoH; quality/desirability obviously isn't the issue or nobody would care that they cant get the costume set without buying the packs. Market flooding might be an issue simply because we get something new to spend our points on every single week (especially with so many things lately being limited-time offers).
FUN FACT: That burst of light when you level up is actually the effectiveness escaping from your enhancements all at once.
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I still believe you are overthinking/overhyping this issue a bit too much by applying open market thinking to what amounts to a bonus optional extra in a closed captive-audience system that has hundreds of other optional things to buy as well.|
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
The job of marketing is essentially to know us, the customers, better than we do ourselves, and to sell us the product that we didn't knew we needed.
Super pack 1 may be a success ("short term profit") but if they don't know why, they may very well make a mistake when releasing super pack 2. And conversely, if they know why super pack 1 was a success, they may improve on the concept to super pack 2. It's not just a matter of repeating the previous formula. The expansions of the ten ton gorilla is one example. The first was immensely successful, so the producers thought it was a nice idea to make more. The second, not so successful. The third, less so. The fourth... well, it's already a controversy and it hasn't been released yet. Remember that there are brands and products. The terms I mentioned earlier are used to describe your brands in order to decide on what products to market. City of Heroes is a brand, Super Packs is the product. The release of the wrong product may weaken the brand, even after an initial success - as was the case of New Coke back in the 80s. Also, there is competition - not about super packs, but the CoH brand as a whole is basically competing about our time (and money) with a lot of other products out there. Most of them are not even superhero games or even MMOs. The point is that a lot of others and WotC themselves tried to repeat the success using nearly identical formulas, but very few managed to survive. Just being a CCG is not enough to be a commercial success. On the contrary, most CCGs weren't. You have to build on it and create a market of it (i.e. "marketing") - and to do that successfully, you must know your market or be extremely lucky. |
The overall success of City of Heroes is not got to rise or fall based on this one thing alone. Heck this game survived the twin Armageddons of the failures of base raiding PvP and ED and is still all the better for it. As far as your worries about grabs for "short term profits" go one could easily make that argument about every Pack this game has ever sold for the last EIGHT YEARS.
The proof of course will come on whether or not we ever see a Super Pack #2 regardless of the form it'll take. If Super Pack #2 turns out to be radically different or never happens at all then I'll be willing to lend your position on this more credence.
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I did - and I thought it was weird to complain about not getting value for your VIP ststus, and then list non-VIP restrictions as an example.
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Originally Posted by Stormbird
think about it a bit.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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That may be the case, I grant you that. |
Originally Posted by Lothic
I still believe you are overthinking/overhyping this issue a bit too much by applying open market thinking to what amounts to a bonus optional extra in a closed captive-audience system that has hundreds of other optional things to buy as well.
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But I'm not sure that the audience is that captive. Granted, this is just anecdotes, but I see a bit too many supergroup mates migrating to the other game with glowing sticks that go bzhuum-whuuum to be really comfortable with the situation.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
As far as your worries about grabs for "short term profits" go one could easily make that argument about every Pack this game has ever sold for the last EIGHT YEARS.
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Here, we have a 22 page long thread three days after the release, plus moaning in other threads, plus a lot of discussion about it on the beta boards.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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The Wedding Pack thread was quite a bit longer |
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
Well, the thing that worries me is that I don't remember any controversy about the earlier packs at all.
Here, we have a 22 page long thread three days after the release, plus moaning in other threads, plus a lot of discussion about it on the beta boards. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Without a link to it, I just have to take your word for it. But I really can't remember it.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The Wedding Pack thread was quite a bit longer
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Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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To be fair this game has survived existential threats from other MMOs for years. For example there were many people claiming with absolute certainty that Champions Online was going to drive this game instantly out-of-business. Still waiting for that to happen... |
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
That may be the case, I grant you that.
But I'm not sure that the audience is that captive. Granted, this is just anecdotes, but I see a bit too many supergroup mates migrating to the other game with glowing sticks that go bzhuum-whuuum to be really comfortable with the situation. |
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Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
Well, the thing that worries me is that I don't remember any controversy about the earlier packs at all.
Here, we have a 22 page long thread three days after the release, plus moaning in other threads, plus a lot of discussion about it on the beta boards. |
P.S. The Wedding Pack was one of the first costume packs this game ever sold. At the time there was a big controversy over whether it was "fair" for the game to sell us costume items. Like most Doom-filled scenarios the angst over it eventually died down, much like the angst over these new Super Packs will too.
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It was also mixed in with the Valentine's Day/Sister Psyche/Manticore wedding stuff too, so it was 100% nerdrage |
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
Without a link to it, I just have to take your word for it. But I really can't remember it.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Check out the book Subliminal Seduction. |
Originally Posted by mousedroid
What you call predation, the rest of the world calls marketing.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Isn't that a Halloween temp power?
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Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Check out the book Subliminal Seduction.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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For my part, I hoped it would spur competition (and it did). |
Originally Posted by Lothic
To be fair this game has survived existential threats from other MMOs for years. For example there were many people claiming with absolute certainty that Champions Online was going to drive this game instantly out-of-business. Still waiting for that to happen...
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But as for the result of Champions, being down and patched as much as it was in the first weeks, having a gameplay too much like the ten ton gorilla and too little like CoH, being released at least a year too early and then being nerfed so hard that the content barely got you to level cap probably helped a lot determining its outcome.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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That probably explained why I missed it.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It was also mixed in with the Valentine's Day/Sister Psyche/Manticore wedding stuff too, so it was 100% nerdrage
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Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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Yes it could be said that CO shot itself in the foot from Day One. But like you said it did serve its purpose: We finally got our Ninja Run and purchasable costume slots out of the deal. |
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
For my part, I hoped it would spur competition (and it did).
But as for the result of Champions, being down and patched as much as it was in the first weeks, having a gameplay too much like the ten ton gorilla and too little like CoH, being released at least a year too early and then being nerfed so hard that the content barely got you to level cap probably helped a lot determining its outcome. |
I think any new MMO will tend to peal away some customers from any preexisting MMOs so I don't really begrudge people who want to go play in a galaxy far, far away. Despite that reality this game has been around and steadily improving for almost eight years now. I'm fairly confident that it has a few more years left to it regardless.
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There is a lot of speculation going on in here, and I want to join in!
From the comments in this thread alone, based on the people who bought packs vs the people who didn't I would say that it is very safe to assume that the packs have sold ridiculously well.
There is speculation on the idea of "why" the packs sold well, but, once again, we can safely assume the "why."
The packs sold because:
1) there is exclusive costume pieces
2) there are new ATOs
3) there is a very rare wolf pet
4) they are only a buck
If the pack was just a random shot at in-game items like enhancement boosters and team inspirations then *nobody* (very few) would actually buy them. The packs are only sold *because* of the exclusive items.
If the devs offered the costume set by itself and inside the super packs, then nobody would by the super packs for the costume set, they would just by the costume set. Considering costume sets are $5 and there are more then 5 costume pieces, and that on average you would only get one costume piece per pack, chances are one ends up spending more money buying the full set from the packs then if they just bought the full set by itself.
Thus we can safely assume that it is in the interest of phat loots to offer exclusive items inside of the random packs in order to ensure the packs are sold. I would even go so far to say that the extra money people have been spending on the packs to complete the set will compensate for the little bit of money the people would have spent to only buy the costume set and nothing more.
Exclusivity is here to stay. I support people's decision to prefer buying the costume set over the random roll in the super packs, but lets not kid ourselves to think the packs would be sold *more* if they didn't have the exclusive items.
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They may have had a chance had they not been scared by the sight of their own feet and shot them off at every opportunity. Relying on the stupidity of others probably isn't the best business plan.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
To be fair this game has survived existential threats from other MMOs for years. For example there were many people claiming with absolute certainty that Champions Online was going to drive this game instantly out-of-business. Still waiting for that to happen...
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As someone in the gambling industry, you should have been familiar with how the law defines gambling. At least in the United States, in every jurisdiction I'm aware of, an act requires three separate elements to be considered gambling. It requires consideration for a random chance at a prize. And those three terms are themselves legally defined to be a monetary entry fee (consideration), non-deterministic random probability (random chance) and an award of specific monetary value above a certain nominal amount. And its not enough to claim the prize can be bought. It must intrinsically have monetary value. The prize in Cracker Jacks is of course technically worth something and you could theoretically buy them on ebay, but that would not meet the requirements for gambling.|
Originally Posted by MrHassenpheffer
I might be a bit biased, because in my career before my home business I was a <gasp>
...slot technician. Yeah. I worked at a casino, for 5 years, and I was really good at what I did <still am>. I repaired slot machines. I know more about slot machines both analog and digital than I'll ever be comfortable admitting. I know how they work, the ins, the outs, the ups, the downs. all of it. I also know about many different levels of addictive behavior and how things like slots can very easily <and quietly> bring out the worst in good <mostly young> people. There's a level of interaction and a fine line to watch when dealing with gaming devices, Typically mmo's are well equipped to AVOID gambling by reward tables that are easy to track. These cards immediately crossed that line. I'm not about to tell anyone how to spend their money. Thing is...Minors play this game... What are the laws about gambling involving minors? |
None of the prizes in the Super Packs have actual monetary value: you can't sell them back to NCSoft for money, and NCSoft does not allow you by the terms of their usage agreement to sell them for money. That means any exchange of those prizes for money would itself be illegal, and NCSoft is not responsible for such activity.
People keep bringing up gambling in the legal sense in the context of these Super Packs, but that argument has exactly zero legal foundation.
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I feel sorry them |
Originally Posted by Lothic
I don't really begrudge people who want to go play in a galaxy far, far away.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
If they're going to release Super Packs as a product in the first place, then they'll want them to be successful and bring in revenue to make the game more profitable for the company. To be successful, they have to have something in them that new players would want, and they have to have something in them that veterans would want. Since veterans already have basically everything, this would imply that there has to be something brand new in the packs that you can only get in the packs to make veterans want to buy the packs. This, to me, is the only reason or explanation of why the ATIOs, the black wolf pet, and costume pieces are in there. Speaking as a VIP player and long term veteran (though I have quit and come back twice now) it doesn't appall, shock, surprise, anger, offend, or phase me that they did this. As a player of this game, if there's a new thing they're rolling out, I'd naturally ask the question "What about this product appeals to me, why would I want to buy it?" and if that question comes up with the answer "Nothing." then I don't buy the product, and the product likely fails and ends up costing the company money for having attempted it in the first place. So for that reason alone they have to put something in there that's exclusive to the superpacks for those of us that already have practically everything else. If anything, the fact that they're going to make the ATIO's buyable with in-game merits AT ALL is the surprise. If they REALLY want to sell Super Packs to us vets, they'd wait a good long time before making that an option. I feel like the amount of Reward Merits you get in the packs coupled with the ability to purchase some ATIOs with merits is cutting me a tangible break that they were under no real obligation to do. As it is my VIP status get's me 400 points per month, with which could buy 5 Super Packs (and what else am I going to spend it on?). They're under no mandate or obligation to make any in-game item widely available like that if they don't want to. There was a time that you had to play this game on a paid account for several YEARS in order to unlock different things like trench coats, wings, etc. That not only had the burden of money but it also required you to WAIT one or more YEARS to finally get the thing. You couldn't even pay up the two years worth of subscription fees all up front just to unlock that stuff, it only dropped when you had put the time in. So anyway, I don't feel like I'm being ripped off, and I like the super packs.
Again everyone talking about a REASON to buy the superpacks where I see the developers with a horridly stupid idea for purchasable content, break out the items to be purchased individually and you'll get most of the VIPs to buy them all. This way? Only for people who have the excess money and points, I want to save my points for a costume pack or a cool power and typically buy an extra 1200 points every other month to keep buying the cool packs they put out. Simply put, I'm going to look at those with the pack as foolish.
They are making plenty of money with the market now, make some teams that just do costumes and pump those out like a heart attack and fire your team coming up with new ways to spend points on worthless things. We all know you make more from people buying items in-game like unslotters that take no amount of coding once intitally made but that's cheap, we know it and we don't want that crap. I have enough respecs from veteran I can takes SETS off of toons, that and I don't respec before 50, the devs forget there are MANY types of players, I'm not an RPer but I know they're behind me on these comments as most of them are only there FOR THE LOOK.
Think of it this way, imagine I get lucky, get everything I wanted in say 10 packs, even the black wolf. Now you, you want them too and you buy 10 packs, get a few not all, buy more or buy 96 packs and STILL not get the wolf, as someone said. I'd feel cheated. From CHANCE the cost of new content can GREATLY vary, not fair in my eyes. Probably the reason I've been in the forums more lately, the game is becoming boring (I spend more time in the costume designer) and costume gambling didn't make it more fun. We do the same repetitive clicking and a better player usually means more time spent on the toon, it's not a skill game AT ALL but still fun for the social aspect. These moronic gimmicks, are just that and now I'm talking to my family of VIPs about turning off our accounts due to this, the start of more crap. Sorry CoH, you don't deserve VIPs if you treat them this way, I'm looking at other MMOs...
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We feel sorry for you too |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I feel sorry them
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Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
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If the developers are looking at it like you are presenting, they need to go back to business school.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
Again to answer your questions all that I will say is that you need to look at things from the Devs' point of view.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
If the marketing guy saw that the Super Packs were selling well the ONLY thing he/she would care about is that the company was doing something right for them to make money. The "distinction" you're trying to draw here is only something that a player might care about - the Devs couldn't care less. What does it matter to Paragon Studios if people are buying them because they like the generic random mechanic of the packs or because they feel obligated to in order to get something exclusive? Either way people are buying them.
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Conversely, if they offered the costumes as a separate bundle and the super packs as they are, they would know which would sell better. At that point they can have a firm basis as to judge the packs success or failure.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
To use a real world example car companies these days usually try to throw in all sorts of extra features into their cars like rear view cameras, built-in GPS, satellite radio and so on to make them distinctive in the marketplace. When a customer comes in to buy they might be motivated to buy for all sorts of reasons. For all the dealer knows maybe the ONLY reason a customer ends up buying his/her car was that it had a feature that couldn't be found anywhere else. Same goes for this game's Super Packs.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
The Super Packs of this game offer an array of features any one of which might motivate someone to buy them. Some people might like the ATOs, others the costume items, still other might only want to chase the Wolf. Some of these things you can get via other methods, some of them you can't.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
You vote with your money
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Originally Posted by Lothic
Basically the company is going to make more money off of selling his new costume set via super packs than they ever would via direct sales.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
It worked for Wizards of the Coast - it'll work for Paragon Studios as well. The people who hate Collectible Card Games don't buy them and WotC still laughs all the way to the bank. *shrugs*
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Originally Posted by Lothic
You're right in one respect: they might not know exactly which element of their multi-featured Super Packs was more important to their overall sales than another. I simply contend that that kind of elemental information might not really be as important as you think it is.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
The Devs are going to look at the overall sales of these Packs as an indicator as to what will come in Super Packs set #2, #3 and so on.
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Originally Posted by mousedroid
By that line of thinking almost all advertising is predatory. Any advertiser worth his or her salt is going to use psychological tricks to get people to buy their products.
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Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell
Market flooding might be an issue simply because we get something new to spend our points on every single week (especially with so many things lately being limited-time offers).
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Originally Posted by Lothic
The proof of course will come on whether or not we ever see a Super Pack #2 regardless of the form it'll take. If Super Pack #2 turns out to be radically different or never happens at all then I'll be willing to lend your position on this more credence.
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I hope the TORtanic has got enough lifeboats |
Originally Posted by MrHassenpheffer
We feel sorry for you too
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Until someone actually -has- the merit to MAKE a legal foundation. If you give them an inch, they will take a foot. There is no, "should have been familiar" here. I know what I'm talking about, addictive behavior will be involved. Iv'e seen this in grown ups, Iv'e seen this in children. This isn't speculation it's a very real thing. Like I said, I'm biased. I'm quite biased. I hope those laws serve their purpose to protect Paragon Studios and its employees. I hope some poor unfortunate mother doesn't find out one day that her kids managed to blow the rent for those cards. I hope something like THAT doesn't get spread all over the internet. That wouldn't look too good, would it? "Paragon Studios enabled a form of digital pseudo gambling to ruin someones life." I hope it doesn't begin to involve lawyers and 1800-gamblingproblem hotline disclaimers. I hope it doesn't come around to bite anyone in the ***. I hope it doesn't but I know it will. It always DOES. You can quote all the pseudo rules you want to defend this gambling by proxy. Go right ahead. You can bash me all you want for my opinions and hide behind whatever smiles, smirks and snickering you want. Go right ahead. doesn't bother Hassenpheffer. not.one.bit. I know addictive behavior. I know what it can do, I know the lengths it will go through for a handlepull, or a card roll. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
As someone in the gambling industry, you should have been familiar with how the law defines gambling. At least in the United States, in every jurisdiction I'm aware of, an act requires three separate elements to be considered gambling. It requires consideration for a random chance at a prize. And those three terms are themselves legally defined to be a monetary entry fee (consideration), non-deterministic random probability (random chance) and an award of specific monetary value above a certain nominal amount. And its not enough to claim the prize can be bought. It must intrinsically have monetary value. The prize in Cracker Jacks is of course technically worth something and you could theoretically buy them on ebay, but that would not meet the requirements for gambling.
None of the prizes in the Super Packs have actual monetary value: you can't sell them back to NCSoft for money, and NCSoft does not allow you by the terms of their usage agreement to sell them for money. That means any exchange of those prizes for money would itself be illegal, and NCSoft is not responsible for such activity. People keep bringing up gambling in the legal sense in the context of these Super Packs, but that argument has exactly zero legal foundation. |
My bottom line: Be very careful Paragon Studios.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
In this case all Marketing has to care about is whether they've produced a product that the players of this game are buying. If what they are selling is selling at or above their expectations what motivation would they have to change that formula when they release Super Packs #2, #3 and so on?
Super pack 1 may be a success ("short term profit") but if they don't know why, they may very well make a mistake when releasing super pack 2. And conversely, if they know why super pack 1 was a success, they may improve on the concept to super pack 2. It's not just a matter of repeating the previous formula.
The expansions of the ten ton gorilla is one example. The first was immensely successful, so the producers thought it was a nice idea to make more. The second, not so successful. The third, less so. The fourth... well, it's already a controversy and it hasn't been released yet.
Remember that there are brands and products. The terms I mentioned earlier are used to describe your brands in order to decide on what products to market. City of Heroes is a brand, Super Packs is the product. The release of the wrong product may weaken the brand, even after an initial success - as was the case of New Coke back in the 80s.
Also, there is competition - not about super packs, but the CoH brand as a whole is basically competing about our time (and money) with a lot of other products out there. Most of them are not even superhero games or even MMOs.
You have to build on it and create a market of it (i.e. "marketing") - and to do that successfully, you must know your market or be extremely lucky.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"