No plans to release Black Wolf/Elemental Order separately.

Ok, gotcha, thank you for the feedback.

So, in your opinion, there's at least a 600-point disparity between this costume set and other costume set bundles because of the SuperPack inclusion.
Do you think Paragon has been vastly underpricing their Costume Set Bundles if they're actually worth 1000 to 1400 points, or is this set in specific worth that much?

Neither actually. I think that the costume set is probably worth 600 points same as other sets (the gun and backpack are worth a little bit more to me because I REALLY like them). However at the moment with the super packs I would say that the Costume Set is costing around 1000 points when purchased through Super Packs (the ATEs and Catalysts are worth something but the inspirations and temp powers are pretty much worthless to me).

So I guess the point I'm making is that if the costume set was released on it's own for 600 points it's a pretty severe discount over what I perceive as the current cost of the costume (note: cost, not value) and that would kind of annoy me.

You know, just as a random though. What about releasing the costume as a Tier 9 option in the Paragon Rewards program (that's just Tier 9, not Tier 9 VIP)? Maybe split across two Paragon Token picks (it doesn't seem worth three).

The costume pieces aren't the only thing of value. The ATEs have some value (although for the most part the supply of them in-game seems to exceed the demand) and the Catalysts are very nice (in fact they are one of the few things I would buy from the store if I could) but the rest of it is a bit meh. I've got loads of stuff from the original Super Packs clogging up my email and haven't really used any of it. I've started making an effort to use up the consumables at least but it's slow going.

In any case the Super Pack mechanic itself has little appeal to me. If I regularly used consumables it might be fun as a semi-discounted way to get them but for the most part if I buy something from the market I want a permanent boost. The only real benefit that I derive from Super Packs is that other people buy them in large quantities to try and get the Black Wolf (or at least I assume that's what they want) which in turn means I can get ATEs cheaply for Inf rather than Paragon Points.

Yes.
It is a fact of human behavior that if you mislead customers, they get mad at you. As this thread demonstrates there are a couple of people who're upset with this system of distribution and refuse to engage it, or engage it under protest. Their unhappiness is the equivalent of a pleasant summer breeze compared to the hurricane of rage that making them generally available now, after many, many, many people bought piles of super packs chasing them would whip up.

The only way it would work would be if the price point was high enough to make Super Pack purchasing the more cost effective option- that is, if super pack buyers got the set at a discount compared to the store price.

Which, as you can see from this thread, would do little to mollify the protesters.


Initially no- I bought a couple out of curiosity to see what they were.

But the costume bits did inspire me to purchase the discounted 25 count bundle of Superpacks.


It's a fun way to collect a prize that interests you.

If you're asking "would opening super packs which contained a random selection of undesirable junk appeal to you", the answer is no.

The mechanism derives the entirety of its appeal from the rewards it offers.


If they are going to have super packs and expect people to buy them, it MUST have an exclusive prize that players A: strongly desire and B: can't get anywhere else.

Theoretically, that item can be anything.
But given the historic predispositions of this game community, I can't imagine anything more effective in the role than costume sets.

I don't consider him saying that there are 600 point costume sets to be honest either. So his range is 1,000 to 1,440 for the set, leaning to the high end of that. That is 2.5-3.6 times a regular costume set (400 PP not on sale). Don't you think it is intellectually dishonest to call me out on my math when you don't do the same for a person that keeps claiming existing costume bundles are 1.5x more than they are?

I've at least made an attempt at explaining where I'm getting my values. I've also went back to clarify how I came to those numbers and to make it clear exactly how I was over-estimating individual parts.

Repeat after me: There are no costume bundles that are 600 points for the complete set... All costume bundles on the Paragon Market are priced at 400 points.

While I sympathize in this reasoning (and I fully agree the consumables are pretty much worthless), you can't really expect a costume set to be the same price as a stand-alone purchase.

Now if it were a bundle of the 11 piece costume set and the black wolf, I could see that being around 600-800 points.

Early adopters generally pay a higher price for owning something first.

This much, I agree with you.

I don't think anyone in this thread has said the costume parts and wolf should be available separately while the super pack they are in is available.

And yet they are retiring the packs from the Paragon Rewards Program either this month or next...

If you are talking about the Celestial Set, Zwillinger's post disagrees with you. The other limited time costume sets will be coming back, or so they have promised.

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

Relax, it was a typo and one that came for a very simple reason: I haven't purchased ANY costumes on the Paragon Market since it was released so I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to the pricing. I do have several of the pre-Freedom costumes but I purchased them through Super Packs. Similarly for the Elemental Order I only really wanted one of the pieces (the Backpack).

Indeed the question is how much sooner and how much higher? As I mentioned a few posts back I consider the "cost" of the Super Pack costume set to be 1000 paragon points. This isn't a fact it's a statement of opinion based on my feelings about the pack. The pack has currently been out about 4.5 months. So what discount would I consider reasonable? Well again purely my opinion I would say:
6 months after the pack: 800 points or 2 Paragon Reward Tokens*
12 months after the pack: 600 points or 1 Paragon Reward Token*
18 months after the pack: 400 points
24 months: Free to VIPs, 400 points for Premiums.

This isn't to say that Paragon Studios should automatically do that it's simply that this is roughly the price and time points where I wouldn't feel annoyed about it.

* For Paragon Rewards I wouldn't actually care which tier it's in. Tier 9 Non-VIP-Exclusive is one option as is simply making a special section for it which can be purchased at any Tier but doesn't contribute to your rewards meter.

Not letting him get away with meaningless babble like this is why he ignored me.

Because as I noted earlier:
The costume sets in the packs are different than the stuff they sell in the store- most notably because they're not in the store. On average it costs more to get them- this makes them more valuable. In any case, market prices are not graven on stone tablets. They have something called SALES, where they sell things for LESS than the list price, proving that these things can and have changed- they are flexible, and there's nothing to stop them going up as easily as they go down.

The first time he ran it up the flagpole I thought it was a contender for stupidest argument I'd ever seen on-line. Repetition isn't improving it any.

Having them on the market at *any* time completely devalues the super packs.

Which wouldn't matter if it were a one-off deal- they could sell them through the packs, then put them in a store and not care about all the pack buyers they pissed off.

But a new round of the things is already on the test server.
If they want to keep going back to that well, those costume sets need to stay exclusive.

Speaking of...Except for different costume/rare power, is everything from Pack 1 in Pack 2?

Super Pack 2 by the numbers by Arcanaville. It is in the beta section.

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

Ah. Different collection of ATOs, too. Hrm.

(emphasis added to highlight my question)

Correct me if I am wrong, but when these were announced, the Dev team said that they had no plans at that time to release the costume pieces any other way.
Of course, almost every single other once-exclusive item is now available through multiple means, such as capes, auras, Alpha slots, etc. Why would this be different?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but that's why I'm asking the question I'm asking. Most people appear to be saying something between "I'd be a little annoyed, depending on price point," and "I don't really care," but then turning around and saying that those guys over there would really be mad. I myself haven't seen more posts saying "I'd be really angry if they offered them," than I have "I'm really angry they aren't offering it."

Actually, if I remember correctly from Beta, several people who disliked the idea of the SuperPacks said they would prefer to buy the costume pieces, even if it cost more than the average rolling for them with the Packs.
So, you would support a high-price-point separate purchase system?

Ok, thanks.

So, you wouldn't support a high-price-point separate purchase system?

That's true. As I was asked to look at this, here's my analysis of card valuation.

Alone, the percentage of each card type that is delivered to players says nothing, because there's no reason why the card values can't and aren't likely weighted. In fact, this suggests that card value is normalized by type which would be obviously false in the case of rare and very rare cards.

But we can *try* to see where logic takes us. Lets assume that very roughly all cards of the same rarity are worth approximately the same amount. In that case, we can make some deductions about value:

If we go by the value of merits, then if we assign the value of common cards as 1, the value of uncommon, rare, and very rare cards would be 2, 3, and 4, due to the number of merits in each card type that awards merits (25, 50, 75, and 100).

The same would be true if we look at the Experienced power and Enhancement Unslotters for common, uncommon, and rare.

For Windfall and XP Booster, rare would be twice as valuable as uncommon.

For Boosters, the ratio would be 1:2.5:4 for common, uncommon, and rare.

All told, the relative value of the cards seems to be between 1:2:3:4 and 1:2:4:6. I'm going to use 1:2:4:6 for the rest of the analysis.

Lets take the 44.20% Common, 20.00% Uncommon, 20.00% Rare, 15.80% Very Rare numbers and round off very slightly (to make life and ratios a little simpler), to get to 44:20:20:16 as the approximate distribution of the cards in the packs. In that case, the actual value of the cards in a pack on average to maintain the above ratios would be 44:40:80:96, and using 80 PP as the base point value of the average pack, the value of the cards in the pack would be approximately:

Common: 6.15 PP
Uncommon: 12.3 PP
Rare: 24.6 PP
Very Rare: 36.9 PP

The Elemental set had two common, three uncommon, three rare, and three very rare components for a total of 11 items. In actuality the devs probably don't consider shoulders to be six times more valuable than sleeves; if they sold the set they would make each item cost about the same amount. But if we consider the rarity distribution to roughly reflect the set's value in aggregate, then we get an estimated value of the Elemental set as reflected in the card scarcity distributions as approximately 233.7 PP.

But that's not really a genuinely precise estimate of those items value in a number of ways: the costume pieces were known obvious chase elements, and the devs weighted the cards to actually cause them to drop faster than the normal scarcity would suggest. Its more what I would call a projection of the potential value of the elemental set and the cards in general. I would consider 233.7 to be more akin to a lower bound on the value of the set than an estimate for its target value. I would believe the set was intrinsically worth more for three reasons: they were (individually) unique chase cards designed to improve the value of the super packs: that implies they added value to the super packs and thus were worth more than their card designations implied; bundles generally cost less than the individual items do separately; the common and uncommon costume parts are probably artificially devalued in the interests of card distribution.


Incidentally, the superpack type with the highest intrinsic value based on card values is also the most common: its the pack with 2 commons, 1 uncommon, 1 rare, and 1 very rare. All other pack types have less value, and that's true no matter what the cards are worth, so long as higher rarity cards are worth more the lower ones in any way. Based on my calculations above that pack contains about 86.1 PP worth of cards. The worst pack, which occurs about one in two hundred, has 55.35 PP worth of cards (common, common, common, uncommon, rare).

And, yet, the only number you quoted was the 1,440 one.

No, last time I checked this thread his post claiming the costume packs cost 600PP hadn't been made, and if he'd said it before, I haven't read those posts, or just skimmed them.

Further, the difference between 400PP and 600PP is hardly the crux of his points, while the mathematical errors you made were and, in part, still are the crux of yours.

Just to clarify on this since it's a minor comment I made which has spawned an inordinate amount of debate.

I made mention of a 600PP Costume pack in two places. The first was when I was establishing how I viewed the breakdown of different "value levels" for costume packs. I set a range of 400PP-600PP as the price range for a "common costume". In this place I was not specifically saying that there were any 600PP costume packs I was simply establishing that I would consider this a viable spread for "common costumes" with 400PP being for neat costumes and 600PP for very cool ones.

The second place was an honest typo (as I mentioned in a previous post). I was talking about relative costume costs and managed to type 600 when I meant 400.

I'll also note that my 1000-1440 range has been amended. My original post used that rnage but since then I've reconsidered and decided to just stick to the low end. I was (originally) discounting the ATEs and Catalysts entirely since I can get them in game but on further reflection that doesn't really hold up. ATEs are relatively cheap on the market because other people are buying Super Packs. If the costume and Wolf were not in super packs then fewer people would have excess ATEs to sell on the market and the price would increase therefore my ATE use is effectively subsidized by the costume portion of the Super Pack. If the costume were sold alone I'd probably have to spend more for my ATEs which effectively lowers the perceived cost of the costume.

Because it's a bad idea that will piss many people off.
I'm philosophically against liberalizing availability of stuff, but I generally get why they do it- they make the calculation that the goodwill they'll earn will exceed the ire from those who previously 'bought' the item by whatever means.

In the case of many of the old gated costume bits the number of players to antagonize had likely dwindled to a handful by the time of the liberalization. Preorder helmets and the like, not a ton of people had them in the first place and not all of those were still playing. Also they were a 'perk', an extra bonus for signing up early, they weren't the whole show- not the case with the super packs.

A lot of players bought a lot of super packs in the recent past.
Put Elemental Order in the store anytime soon and brace for the firestorm.

What you see in this thread is skewed because the people who're happy with the status quo are mostly not posting. People *with* a complaint are much more likely to participate in these things than people without.


Support it?
No.
I think the status quo is fine and don't see why an alternative should be supplied.

Tolerate it?
Sure, provided the convenience fee for avoiding the packs was high enough to offset the premium payed by pack buyers.


see above.

I'm curious why you think this is so.
If they put it at a price point equal to the amount of Paragon Points it would take to get them normally (400-600) then isn't this a win-win?

Put another way...and not sure if this is an equal comparison, in that Magic card game people compare the packs to, there are cards that are worth $300-$500 (the Black Lotus and Moxes) but most people that still play with those would be more than glad to see them reprinted just because they are SO rare that anyone wanting to play with them faces a huge barrier to entry.

Now, these items (Elemental Order) are not game-useful in the way purples are and those are in the store. I have the full Elemental Order on both accounts and really, if they wanted to make it available I wouldn't bat an eyelash since it puts more cash in the coffers and more people are happy about it...and this is from someone that has nearly ALL the costume temps as well from the cons.

If they price it what it would take to "normally get them", then people can just buy packs, no?

The thing is, some people got a discount on this set- one guy said he got all the pieces in 10 packs. 15 isn't uncommon. It took me 30 +. I'm sure it took some folk more than that.

So if they want to sell these sets in the store, why should I buy any more packs?

I'll just wait around for it to hit the store and likely save myself some money.


Anyone can get the Order set- it's not rare, it's not difficult, it's just pricier on average and less deterministic than the sets on the market.

You are an enlightened soul.
Alas, far more folk are like me than like you. =P

This is largely what it comes down to. People HATE feeling like they got taken advantage of. Remember back when Going Rogue was coming out and it was revealed that people who had pre-ordered would not get the same goodies as people who bought it at the store (new costumes and a month of game time). Even though pre-ordering got you early access to Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning a lot of people were still pissed and demanded refunds.

The same basic principle applies here. Releasing the costumes and wolf to the store is fine BUT the price and time needs to be done so that people who got them through packs don't feel like they were ripped off. If the price is to low or the exclusive period to short then in addition to losing goodwill from customers it will almost certainly impact sales of future Super Packs since people will just decide to wait and get it when it comes out in the store and I'm willing to bet that will cost Paragon Studios money.

As a side note, I will say that I find the Super Packs considerably better value than the random item packs in another MMO that I have played in the past.

They were also told that the new costumes would be available as an add-on pack for those that bought it before it was released (which it was). Everyone was also told that the add-on pack would cost the difference between the pre-purchase and the full retail pack. The trade-off was 1 month of game time vs 7 months of use for Dual Pistols and 6 months use for Demon Summoning.

I really don't have sympathy for those that didn't read the announcements before buying in that case.

Actually, no it doesn't. Instead of being told that the items will be available after the full release, we're being told "Our current position is that we're not going to release them separately. We might eventually decide differently, however we need to be convinced to do so."

Going Rogue items: Up front with potential customers saying that the customers will get advanced use of the power sets and would have the extras as the difference between pre-purchase and complete box by giving up the extra month from the retail box.

Super Pack Items: We may do it, but at this time we don't want to and have no plans to do so in the future.

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

Oh geez, I forgot about that kerfuffle.

That particular situation didn't bother me at all (dp! demons! wheeeeee!) but a lot of people felt ill used and completely freaked out about it.

Actually yes it does.
Player psychology trumps semantic dissection of dev statements.

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy either BUT that doesn't change the fact that people were upset. You've probably heard the mantra that "The Customer is Always Right", you know why businesses operate that way? It's not because they care about the customer it's because at the end of the day making the customer happy is good for business. It doesn't actually matter whether the customer is actually right or not it's just a case of determining whether accepting the customer's insanity will be more cost effective than denying it.

The same thing applies to both the Going Rogue collection and the Super Packs. It doesn't matter whether customers got ripped off or not what matters is whether customers believe they got ripped off. In the case of Going Rogue there were a demonstrable number of paying customers who felt that they had been cheated by Paragon Studios. It doesn't matter whether they were cheated what matters is that they believe they were.

It's exactly the same with the Super Packs, if the costume and/or wolf pet are sold independently there will be people who believe that they were cheated. That means that for Paragon Studios the question becomes at what time and at what price point will the goodwill that they gain from people like you outweigh the negative publicity they get form people who believe they were cheated. Obviously the longer they wait and the higher they set the price the fewer people will be upset but no matter what if they release it someone will be upset. It doesn't matter whether they have a right to be upset or not it's still negative publicity for Paragon Studios.

I've only been thinking on the costume stuff, but if they put that wolf in the store..........some folk who burned a couple hundred packs chasing it would go POSTAL.

Yeah I'm not sure that there's any sort of fair price to set for that.