Discussion: Introducing Tweet Code Thursdays!

I am fortunate enough to have a decent connection, my friend doesn't all the time and he suggested it. Some nights he logs in and logs right back out because the game is unplayable.

The market interface is a simple web client. It makes a call to a specific set of pages located on the NCsoft server. How do I know this? During the Issue 21 open beta people were able to surf to google with the market window. I wasn't in the closed beta, but I expect it was possible there too.

As to auto refresh, I know it doesn't. You'd have to close the window and reopen it. Then again, that suggestion relied on the fact that it didn't refresh. A player couldn't just keep refreshing in-game and stumble on the secret sale item. As to limiting the time, I know that is already a function of the market. We've had how many time limited sales since last September?

Yes, that goes along with the fact that the market window is a simple web client. I'm not sure what that has to do with your point though.

Again, your point?

Because it is a web page that requires a lot of confirmation that you should be allowed to access the market. It also doesn't cache the banners so that would be even more data needing to be sent.

I've been programming since elementary school. I started programming in 1981. I think I'm more than qualified to make a judgement call on programming.

Yes. I instantly grokked how much work the current change would do. I also understood what this would do to future contests of this type: completely kill any community team motivation to do them.

I think the community team took the wrong thing away from this thread. The core over the dissatisfaction over this (and any other) contest is the non-limited exclusivity.

Someone at Paragon Studios loves to have exclusive content. This clearly shows in their willingness to continually annoy their customers with open-ended exclusives. Their customers have repeatedly given feedback since the CoH CE that they are annoyed with open-ended exclusives. All I have to do is take a look back at the Wal-Mart deal with the Good vs Evil edition. What a <censored>-storm that was.

This applies to all of the following (but not limited to them):

• Collector Edition bonuses
• Tier 9 Paragon Rewards
• Super Packs
• Social Media Promotions
• Themed Packs

[Edit]

What should be done about this? Permanent exclusives should not exist in the game. Every exclusive item should come with the provision that the item will be exclusive for a limited time and will be available on the market later. Wasn't the main selling point of CoH: Freedom that players have a choice? Permanent exclusives limit that choice.

[/Edit]

Had this been in place, the first-come, only-served nature of the Twitter giveaway would be a non-issue. As it stands with the current situation, nobody really wins. More to the point, everyone loses. The players lose out on future cool items like the auras. The community team loses time to do more giveaways and future opportunities for contests like this.

Tl;DR summation:

If the company wants exclusives as incentives, they should use them. However those exclusives should come with a built-in expiry date that is shared. After the expiry date, they should be widely available and not limited any more.

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

Never could get the hang of Thursdays.

EDIT: Also, what Snow Globe said. Now that we have the market, all exclusive items should be released with the understanding that they will appear on the market after a certain amount of time has passed. I am baffled by any company's reluctance to make money.

I've said it before -- I think I mentioned it earlier in this thread, even -- exclusives are fine, but within reason. I also missed out on the recent loyalty pack, because my VIP subscription lapsed for all of six days back in January. And it's fine with me that other people have that stuff right now, while I don't. It's fine with me that other people got that stuff for free. What's not okay with me is being told, "you didn't have an active subscription for those six whole days, therefore you'll never be able to get those things, ever, by any means, no matter what, for no other reason than that we don't feel like allowing you to have them."

It's not like there's a limited supply. Paragon can't run out of these things.

The world isn't fair by necessity; I don't make as much money as some people because money has to come from somewhere, and other people have better jobs due to better education, better opportunity, living in a different area, et cetera.

It's not because someone with an infinite supply said "no" just because they can.

with regards to 'free' giveaways like this, yes it's smart to add stuff to the store eventually. the 'perk' in this case being a free (whatever) plus the ability to show it off for a bit before the proles can get hold of it.
Then you get $$ from the proles too- win/win, as the folk who got the freebie can't be legitimately mad at you for selling something they got free.

With regards to things that have previously been sold (specifically, super pack costume sets) having them appear in the store would be counterproductive. A window of exclusivity isn't enough of a perk to inspire most players to pony up the next time the devs come along with a similar 'golden opportunity'.

My point? You suggested a five minute window on the market. Loading a page on the market can take longer than that. The situation would be even worse if you send hundreds of people to hammer the server at once.

Your friend clearly has a very GOOD connection. Just because he can't stand a little occasional lag does not negate that he has a good enough connection to suggest such a discriminative scheme.


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We agree that all such items should be made available on the market. Giving away over 250 aura codes was equivalent to giving away over $1K USD at regular market prices for auras. No doubt some winners are sitting on those, banking on cashing them in for billions of influence in the game due to their exclusivity.

While I do very much appreciate the time and labor committed to this on Friday, I agree with you that it cannot be a fun time for Hit Streak and Zwillinger. And when it was a mad scramble to grab a publicly posted code it was no fun for most players.

Automation and further time sensitive random giveaways do not solve much. If I am going to suggest anything in the handling of giveaways of exclusive items, it would be to require more meaningful participation and/or creativity from entrants and reduce time sensitivity.

For example, Twitter avails the posting of images (viewable inline, so fairly convenient to scroll through on a web client or graphical app), and the Twitter timeline retains posts for a couple of days -- so an image-based (screenshots, fan art, etc.) contest comparable to the in-game costume contests would be possible, and would not need to be quite so time sensitive. It could be treated like #FollowFridays, using a specific hashtag and tracked for a day (or at least a window large enough not to exclude too many people). Fewer Twitter users would be annoyed by having contest retweets flood their timelines since there would be actual content attached to entries, and that content would serve as advertisement for the game on Twitter. As well, though prizes would be far more limited, few would resent the lucky ones who earned their codes.

Sure, that would still take up some of the community team's time, but I'm guessing it would be a lot more enjoyable than getting carpal tunnel syndrome from sending out hundreds of codes to Twits who did nothing but click a button.

And yet there was nothing on FB about the Thursday Tweet day or whatever...

damned if you do, damned if you dont. IMO. Consistency would be nice, f youre going to announce something, announce it on all avenues or at the very least FB since the numbers clearly show that you reach more people that way.

Well, you apparently haven't paid much attention to their Facebook page then.

Take a look at the screenshots below:



That shows a post on their Facebook page on July 11 announcing Tweet Code Thursdays. That was posted on Wednesday at the same time as they posted the announcement to the CoH Forums and to Twitter. The posting in the News section on the CoH website is dated July 10, but I didn't see it until the 11th, so it may have been prepared on the 10th but as a hidden article until the 11th.

and:



That shows a posting on their Facebook page on Friday announcing that they would only be doing one Freedom Friday session but that you could get prizes on Twitter in the meantime. Since them doing it on Friday was a last minute decision (due to the extended maintenance to the PlayNC site going longer than planned) I don't see how they could have announced it any sooner.

It sure looks to me like they used Facebook to promote it.

Your post was just being disingenuous in trying to claim otherwise when ANYONE could plainly see it on their Facebook page.

Seeing the information on the Facebook page doesn't even require having a Facebook account or being logged in to Facebook.

To comment on their Facebook page you have to have a Facebook account, but you don't have to have one simply to read what is posted there.

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

A good point.
Facebook's information disseminating is completely arbitrary, barring slipping them some cash to improve it.

For an interesting take on this: http://three-yards.com/2012/05/30/on...-prostitution/

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

I disagree -- there should be permanent exclusives in the game, and they should be tied to specific events/promotions that the dev team, the community team, the marketing team, or any or all of them wants to promote as a Big Deal. Why?

Because if you make it a policy that anything given out as an 'exclusive' will only be temporarily exclusive and will eventually be generally available, then you lower the draw of the exclusive item. "Oh, they're giving away Kirby Dots on Twitter? Meh, I'll just wait until they show up as part of a costume pack or in Astral Christy's store." "Oh, they're giving a free powerset unlock to everyone who goes to HeroCON? I'll just buy the powerset -- it'll be cheaper than trying to get to California."

A certain proportion of your customer base wants to feel special, to have stuff that other characters don't have, or that only a few other characters have. Exclusive promotions allow you to do that and drive traffic to things you really want driven.

Are exclusive promotions the best way to build a community? I'd say no, but that's a different question.

--
Pauper

"...where it won't be free like it is on Twitter today."
"...six months later."

There's your exclusivity. There's your special feeling. There's your misplaced attitude of superiority over all those poor, worthless slobs who don't have that stuff and therefore aren't as good or as cool or as important as you.

Nobody should ever be told "you missed this incredibly-narrow or prohibitively-expensive 'opportunity,' so you can't have this item, ever, no matter what, with no recourse whatsoever until the end of time" unless there's some practical limitation on producing the item (for example, only a limited number were manufactured and it would be too difficult or expensive to make more) -- no such practical limitations exist in a game like this. The code for all of these exclusives is already sitting on the hard drive of every player of this game, waiting to be unlocked. Saying "okay, here's what you need to do to actually use that item you already have" is one thing. Saying, "nyah, nyah, we could give you a means of accessing it, but we just don't feel like it" is quite another.

If they gave an exclusive power set to people who went to a Player Summit, I would flat out quit the game.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I don't see the issue here at all.

With temporary exclusives NCSoft:
* Almost surely gets money from the paying crowd, as opposed to the current system where they are sure to get no money (just a nebulous advertising benefit) and have to invest staff time in handling this rather then doing something more directly productive.
* Likely doesn't gain a significantly different amount of goodwill from the people who get it free (people still like free stuff even if others pay for it, because it is free).
* Isn't as likely to generate badwill from people who never will have a chance to get the stuff.

I don't see how a handful of people being able to say "Dude, I'm going to be one of the only people with kirby dots, EVER!" is going to increase revenue more then selling the product to a potentially significant portion of the customer base.

I couldn't agree more.

Those people are bad and wrong.

This...

And DEFINITELY this! I won't even play around or waste my time posting in this forum. If there EVER was a promotion to this extreme involving a power set I promise not another penny to NCSoft or any of its products in the future and I would be totally done with CoX.

I would try to get it free first. Like I did back in the day when the Martial Arts set and others came about. I imagine I wasn't alone on this as it seemed like every code was taken in seconds.

If someone traveled all the way from the east coast to California for an exclusive, I would seriously question their priorities. Or try to be their friend, seeing as they have far too much disposable income.

How about this? If people want to feel special, maybe they should try doing something special. Be a great trial leader, be a helpful voice in the din of the help channel, make great stories to share with their fellow players. Heck, maybe they could even trying doing something great in the real world.

Funny thing, I looked on their FB page BEFORE making that post. FB as of late has been very buggy. For instance I saw a posting about comic con from... a competitor, and it was gone all weekend. Then today I found it again.

But Ill admit when im wrong-and I see the posting now. But dont call me names as you know nothing about me or my actions before writing a post.

Plus different timezones