Demand Test Lockbox Items

kamokami

"Make stuff that people want" is a popular saying in the small business world....mostly because it's the only way to make money.

The first step of that being: "know what people want". I wonder if that first step could be improved upon as it relates to lockboxes.

I suggest trying to figure out what lockbox items will be in high demand earlier in the process: **before putting in the effort to make them**. I imagine that right now there's a problem where the dev team is basically guessing what should be in the lockbox for it to be in high demand.

Maybe some of the guesswork could be better informed?

Since people, myself included, are notoriously bad at accurately identifying what they will or won't spend money on....asking players outright "would you buy this?" will not provide good data if the item has not already been made.

So how to overcome this chicken & egg issue? One model that's worked incredibly well has been Kickstarter....where if enough people fund the creation of product then it gets made...by funding it they also get the product once it's made+extra vanity goodies. Essentially a small sample of people buy the product before it's made available to the broader market.

I suggest trying something similar with lockboxes.....when the boxes are in the planning stage, have a limited number that people can reserve with a deposit at a discount. The "early-access boxes" can just include concept sketches of the items that are being considered. If the lockbox items that a person reserved are made, then great! And if not then the deposit is returned to the person.

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spinnytop

Eh wot? So I get a bunch of sketches of items that are being considered, but there's no guarantee that they would even be in the lockbox? So how are they supposed to figure out what I want?

kamokami

spinnytop said:

Eh wot? So I get a bunch of sketches of items that are being considered, but there's no guarantee that they would even be in the lockbox? So how are they supposed to figure out what I want?

If you put down a deposit, which would be discounted from their real price, to get the items when they're made that means you want them. If they don't make the items you get your deposit back.

So they see which items got the most deposits and make those.

sterga

Isn't that what sales figures and a/b tests are for? Don't devs already have tools available to figure this stuff out?

This also defeats the purpose of getting players to gamble for lockbox loot. Especially since the people funding it would also probably be the biggest key purchasers that won't be purchasing keys since they already got what they wanted from the lockbox.​​

kamokami

sterga said:

Isn't that what sales figures and a/b tests are for? Don't devs already have tools available to figure this stuff out?

No? You can't ab test something that's not made yet. Well you can ab test previews of things before they're made....but that's essentially what I'm proposing. If they're already doing it then great.

sterga said:

This also defeats the purpose of getting players to gamble for lockbox loot. Especially since the people funding it would also probably be the biggest key purchasers that won't be purchasing keys since they already got what they wanted from the lockbox.​​

It doesn't because they're released in a limited quantity.

spinnytop

Explain more about this "limited quantity". Is it limited numbers of people or limited numbers of boxes? Initially it sounded like we were reserving the items, but now it sounds like we're just reserving the actual lockboxes?

jaazaniah1

Hasn't some sort of Kickstarter approach been talked about for funding the development of other aspects of the game and been nixed? I have a hazy recollection of that. OTOH, the current lock box is pretty underwhelming in terms of content. I've got what I wanted now and am moving on.

I'd be interested in seeing the Devs being willing to risk trying something different, rather than the same old, same old. E.g. they could put out mock ups of possible costumes that could go into a box or to the zen store and have some sort of Kickstarter funding to decide which to produce. Not sure though if the Devs prefer to shove stuff at us that they think is cool (but which players may not like), or to get the kind of feedback suggested in the OP.

kamokami

spinnytop said:

Explain more about this "limited quantity". Is it limited numbers of people or limited numbers of boxes? Initially it sounded like we were reserving the items, but now it sounds like we're just reserving the actual lockboxes?

Could be either one I suppose. The initial idea is to do it with items that are slated to go into the lockbox. And limit the number of of players that can make a deposit to acquire those items.

The broader, and more important, suggestion is to find a way to get signal about whether the planned items for a given lockbox will be in high demand. How that's best done? Well it would be cool to hear other ideas regarding that.

jaazaniah1 said:

Hasn't some sort of Kickstarter approach been talked about for funding the development of other aspects of the game and been nixed?

The goal is not to fund development of the game with a limited number of deposits from players on sketches of items. The goal is to gather data to build certainty that the planned lockbox will be a popular one. I have not found anything like that be talked about before.

sterga

Most articles about f2p profits like to mention how a tiny fraction of players are basically supporting the entire game by spending money. All I see with this suggestion is a way to have the people who buy lockboxes bypassing the the entire lockbox part. Why would a company sabotage their own profits that way?​​

kamokami

sterga said:

Most articles about f2p profits like to mention how a tiny fraction of players are basically supporting the entire game by spending money. All I see with this suggestion is a way to have the people who buy lockboxes bypassing the the entire lockbox part. Why would a company sabotage their own profits that way?​​

They wouldn't sabotage their own profits.

The devs have numbers that are specific to this game....they would make the call regarding how widely or narrowly to define the availability of preview deposits. They could dial it up or down any time. Or they would offer it only to players who have not spent money before. Or they would not offer a discount but instead throw in something extra. Or they would offer them as prizes for CCs or testing events to see how many people show up. Or they would be more thoughtful than I have been in the last 5 minutes and come up with something even better.

Point being...they don't have to sabotage their profits to figure out what items people want to buy.

chaosdrgnz43

There also needs to have some dev-player communication. There's only like one or two devs frequently interacting with the playerbase.

Maybe add a monthly poll for the items in development and see if the players will like it or not.

ealford1985

^

I like the idea of having an open poll. Especially for the Gold Monthly item. Throw in like 4 of the random items they have made (which was originally the thing behind it...random pieces that weren’t meant for a set)


And see which ones we would want.

jaazaniah1

As kamo notes, what people say in polls, and what they really do/spend money on are not the same thing. I appreciate the idea of testing the waters by seeing what people will actually spend money on (like the Assyrian costume set that is so desperately needed ).

I also appreciate that devs should really communicate more with the players. Not sure what the reason is for the current relative silence (bad past experiences, company policy, not enough time for the small team, etc.). E.g. probably Kai. already knows which power sets are going to be done in which order and what the general purpose of each revamp will be. That's something that could be shared with the community.

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kamokami

psychicslug said:

isn't there a forum for these so called suggestions for various things? Yes we are on them so don't see the point in this thread

Did you read the first post? Reading it would help you see the point of this thread.

spinnytop

psychicslug said:

isn't there a forum for these so called suggestions for various things? Yes we are on them so don't see the point in this thread

That kinda misses the point. Players are actually pretty bad at knowing what they want. It's much easier for them to tell you if you lay a couple things out in front of them and say "which of these would you like?". Hell, just look around for how many "I want this in lockboxes" threads there are... you'll be looking for a long time.

kamokami said:

How that's best done? Well it would be cool to hear other ideas regarding that.

So been thinking for a bit. The thing about a 'vertical slice' like what you're trying to get is that you want to get one that's as deep as possible. So things like reservations, or forum polls aren't so great because your ping gets limited depth. Forum polls only gets the forum crowd, and reservations are subject to life circumstances that prevent people from participating.

So my suggestion would be an in-game poll. Here's my idea for how I would do it.


So you create an NPC that stands near Defender - kind of off to the side so they stand out. Call them "Marketing Robot" or something and make them a big old robot that people will really notice. This NPC will be a vendor that has dummy items representing all the possible future lockbox items. They also give a one-time-per-account quest each time the contents of their vendor shop are updated that gives out a certain amount of currency. Players then spend the currency in the vendor on the items they would like to see in future lockboxes - how much currency they put into each item would weight their choices. Devs can then data mine what the vendor sold to see what people want.

The dummy items the player has purchased are then the turn in for the second quest the vendor has, which gives the player some sort of reward...maybe some resources or questionite, to motivate people to participate.

kamokami

spinnytop said:

So my suggestion would be an in-game poll. Here's my idea for how I would do it.

So you create an NPC that stands near Defender - kind of off to the side so they stand out. Call them "Marketing Robot" or something and make them a big old robot that people will really notice. This NPC will be a vendor that has dummy items representing all the possible future lockbox items. They also give a one-time-per-account quest each time the contents of their vendor shop are updated that gives out a certain amount of currency. Players then spend the currency in the vendor on the items they would like to see in future lockboxes - how much currency they put into each item would weight their choices. Devs can then data mine what the vendor sold to see what people want.

The dummy items the player has purchased are then the turn in for the second quest the vendor has, which gives the player some sort of reward...maybe some resources or questionite, to motivate people to participate.

This is a great idea! A couple of questions....are per-account quests possible? If not maybe the currency award could be done via earning a perk or title.

Would there be some way to minimize "throw-away" votes? With many polls, people often fill them out really fast without actually choosing anything so that they can get to the immediate incentive. But I think this is a solvable problem...if resolved, the vendor+item exchange quest might be an "easy" way to pull this off!

spinnytop

For throw away votes only thing I can think of is to have ah "I don't care just gimme the reward" option on the vendor, so that people can at least mark themselves as a throw away vote. The perk giving the reward would be a good way to motivate people to only bother doing the vote once. As with any poll, you have to expect that there will be "nothing answers" but that they won't have any serious effect on the results.