In that case, the original price advertised was actually accurate considering it actually sold for that.
The point is that the price changed. Price changes happen. They decided they didn't want to sell the dragonborn pack for $100 so they reduced the price before anyone even bought it for that. Again, price changes happen. Much better that way. As opposed to them charging more for it, then reducing the price after people payed more. You can't make money angering your customers that way.
Which all of that is besides the whole other new 'bundle' they are offering. Which is a great idea imo. For those who won't/can't get the more expensive pack.
The point is that the price changed. Price changes happen. They decided they didn't want to sell the dragonborn pack for $100 so they reduced the price before anyone even bought it for that. Again, price changes happen. Much better that way. As opposed to them charging more for it, then reducing the price after people payed more. You can't make money angering your customers that way.
Which all of that is besides the whole other new 'bundle' they are offering. Which is a great idea imo. For those who won't/can't get the more expensive pack.
All I'm saying is that if you're putting an offer to reward your early buyers. You better freaking reward them. Can't really say anything else without repeating myself. As I've said the bundle isn't what I object to, it's the way they've handled the situation that I do. For that there's no reason for me to spend my money ever again considering they've made it completely unrewarding every single time. Luckily they make it easy to do that by making the game not as interesting as when it first came out. I planned not to spend more an earlier time, I should've kept to that, but being an inventory hog the sale and bag space tempted me.
All I'm saying is that if you're putting an offer to reward your early buyers. You better freaking reward them. Can't really say anything else without repeating myself.
Yeah, I think I'm kinda going round and round here too. I just disagree. Its a lot harder to raise a price later than it is to lower it. And imo the people who bought it early didn't actually lose anything. Anyway, I'll drop it now. Till weeks later, if this thread is still around and I forget I said this. lol.
Halgarth's Legacy-NWS-DSTGFZHFR
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
All I'm saying is that if you're putting an offer to reward your early buyers. You better freaking reward them. Can't really say anything else without repeating myself. As I've said the bundle isn't what I object to, it's the way they've handled the situation that I do. For that there's no reason for me to spend my money ever again considering they've made it completely unrewarding every single time. Luckily they make it easy to do that by making the game not as interesting as when it first came out. I planned not to spend more an earlier time, I should've kept to that, but being an inventory hog the sale and bag space tempted me.
And this is true for a lot of people as well.
When the Dragonborn Legend pack came out, I rushed to the website, drooling over new stuff...I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm a sucker for those kinds of things.
Anyway, the little voice in my head kept saying, "$75..really? Really? Are you sure?" And I wasn't. Of course, the other voice said, "Buy now or it'll be $100 later!!!" But I waited on it, and ultimately decided not to buy it.
Then Module 4 launched, I saw it was still on sale, and again the urge to purchase came back. But I held off.
Good for me. I saw it was in the Zen shop at 7500 Zen. On the 15% bonus Zen weekend, I purchased some more Zen, got the bonus Zen of 15% + 600 for the $100 purchase. I then bought it in the cash shop at an overall bigger discount than even the "discounted" $75 price.
Which brings me back to my point. Next time Cryptic does a "big deal special bonus awesome act now pack", they have a much, much higher hurdle to clear before I'll jump on it. It's going to need to be a pretty compelling special, otherwise I'm going to go with my "wait and see" approach that's served me well in the past.
EDIT: And I think one of the easiest ways to do this is to have unique features added to people who buy early. It would've been easy to add a single BoA Rage Drake Mount to the Dragonborn Pack to all those who purchased before X date, instead of advertising a sales price.
In fact, it might be a nice gesture by Cryptic to give everyone who purchased a Dragonborn Legend pack before the expiration date of the "sale" a free BoA Rage Drake as a make up for never actually returning the pack to it's $100 price. And it would also exclude those like myself who got a better deal by buying it in game, as well. And I'd be fine missing out on something like that...probably would've wished I had purchased the pack early for the free mount, actually
If you saved the coupons from a previous event you could get it for even less too like a guildie did. I actually only got a few coupons myself. I should've got more but the game kind of drained my energy to even bother.
Generally I don't expect much and am quite the opposite of greedy. What I do expect though is companies that provide entertainment (for profit) to focus on care for their service and that you make your customers feel valued instead of feel like just a wallet. Yes they're a business that needs to make money, but it's our enjoyment they need to cater for. I really don't know why people even defend them after everything they've done since Mod 1.
I really don't know why people even defend them after everything they've done since Mod 1.
Because some of us like what they've done since mod 1? Dreadring was great, the second best mod imo. IWD is ok too. As for ToD... I've said before I love ToD. I like that they expanded on existing areas. I like that lower levels can start it before 60. I like the dragon fights. I like getting the artifact weapon from the campaign. I know not everyone agrees with me though.
I think part of my acceptance of it is that most of my characters I care about are already done with the earlier campaigns. Only my new ones are still working on the earlier stuff. I can imagine it would be quite painful to try to do all dailies on all campaigns at once. I think if their was one thing I would change, it would be to have you go to 2 random zones a day instead of all of them. But that doesn't kill it for me.
Halgarth's Legacy-NWS-DSTGFZHFR
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
"NO. You didn't pay $75 for the Dragonborn Race...you paid $75 for the Pack and everything that came with it. If you want to take the view that you paid for the race that's your business...but that's not what happened. And no, we never said we would never make the race available as a standalone and even if we did, EULA."
Heard all of this before when people complained about the pricing and the sudden appearance of the pack on the zen store. Same old song and dance.
Yes, they get to do what they did. No, that doesn't make it any less bovine excrement. Yes, PWE has been using this model elsewhere. No, that doesn't make it a player-focused decision. Yes, PWE is profit-focused and not player-focused. No, that doesn't mean we...the players paying the money PWE is making...have to think it's at all a good business practice.
I didn't wait for a better deal because I didn't think there would be one. And as I said, I felt like I was forced to buy the race for 7500 because there wasn't a standalone.
You basically just said that its okay for the company to screw a few buys over if they can make even more money on it.
Just don't ever buy any "unique" item from Cryptic ever again. Lesson I learned hard 75$ way. Never ever again. simple as that.
This people never cared about customers just $$ reasons. We still remember "25% discount" of pack for 75$ real money and zen price for 70$ first day of mod 4. Now it is 25$. So the actual value of dragonborn race is 10$ if race re-roll is 15$ as far as i remember.
And for the life of me I can't figure out why people who feel like this game has been indefensible since Mod 1 are still here.
Pretty much this.
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petestarksMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited September 2014
Reading all these threads as they crop up really makes me think of the old saying about how people get the government they deserve. We have folks getting outraged over the wrong issues like them breaking up the pack in the future to increase profits. Of course they were going to do that... EVERYONE DOES THAT! Then we have the "you got what you paid for, so be quiet and like it" crowd. If we want to talk technicalities then sure people that paid cash(like myself) received what they paid for. The issue was never the delivery of the items, but about how it was presented and handled marketing wise. I just feel like we will never go forward because people are just raging so far in the wrong direction that it has overshadowed the true problem.
And for the life of me I can't figure out why people who feel like this game has been indefensible since Mod 1 are still here.
People like myself stick around because we are invested into the game with either money, time or both. While I have seen a great many less than good changes made to the game it has not been 100% terrible. I mean we are talking pretty rough issues, but we have had improvements such as the dungeon keys. I can't be the only one that remembers wasting a whole DD event fighting to the chest only to have people wipe once and rage quit the last boss. That is a prime example that some choices they make for the game are indeed good and move us forward. However, if you believe in something you will want it to improve and the best way to do that is to not sugarcoat your feeling about it. Personally I really like Neverwinter and I want it to succeed and overcome it's many flaws. That is why I stick around and I doubt I'm the only person that feels this way.
Back on the topic of the DragonpackGate(see what I did there) we need to understand this is NOT a court of law. Bringing all this fraud and law talk into it will only cause things to get deleted and locked into the abyss. It was a bonehead marketing play and that is all it will ever be. Folks just need to learn the way they operate as a business and just be smarter next time a "sale" comes along. I am just very bummed out that we never received an official response or some form of "we are sorry" gift for the people that pre-ordered. They did it for Caturday and I for one would like a Dragon Day cloak!
Back on the topic of the DragonpackGate(see what I did there) we need to understand this is NOT a court of law. Bringing all this fraud and law talk into it will only cause things to get deleted and locked into the abyss. It was a bonehead marketing play and that is all it will ever be. Folks just need to learn the way they operate as a business and just be smarter next time a "sale" comes along. I am just very bummed out that we never received an official response or some form of "we are sorry" gift for the people that pre-ordered. They did it for Caturday and I for one would like a Dragon Day cloak!
It was not a 'boneheaded' marketing ploy. It was a toe in the water to see what price the market would bear. Remember that they'd never sold a race for cash before. And it's far from uncommon practice to use an 'introductory discount' to try and boost initial sales.
So what did you want them to do when sales at $75 made it clear that they wouldn't sell ANY at $100? Carry on anyway and make zero cash and simultaneously make sure there were never going to be more than a handful of Dragonborn in game? No competent business would make that decision.
People really are getting their knickers in a knot over absolutely nothing. But I guess it's easier to blame an 'evil corporation' than simply accept the consequences of your own decision.
It was not a 'boneheaded' marketing ploy. It was a toe in the water to see what price the market would bear. Remember that they'd never sold a race for cash before. And it's far from uncommon practice to use an 'introductory discount' to try and boost initial sales.
So what did you want them to do when sales at $75 made it clear that they wouldn't sell ANY at $100? Carry on anyway and make zero cash and simultaneously make sure there were never going to be more than a handful of Dragonborn in game? No competent business would make that decision.
People really are getting their knickers in a knot over absolutely nothing. But I guess it's easier to blame an 'evil corporation' than simply accept the consequences of your own decision.
First off the $25 sale price issue is a lesser grip at best and as a small business owner myself here is exactly how I would of done it if I wanted both make money AND earn customer loyalty. Because you can either make lots of money and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off customers that never buy from you again, you can have happy customers that earn less than stellar profits or you can ride the middle. You can not just have all the best cash grabs and all happy customers(unless you are selling iphones?).
The winning plan:
1) Pre-order right now and you will be the first to have access to the dragonborn race(plus get sweet items) and pay $75 instead of $100.
1a) You feel that $75 is a better permanent price, but you already sold people on this discount perk. Simple! Give them a rareish item or a small claimable pack with something to make up for the road bump. It costs them nothing to do this and heals the wound of people feeling jilted over the price not going up after launch.
1b)Please note I said "be the first" vs saying "gain exclusive access" and sure the word "exclusive" draws more sales... until they are sales for pitchforks and torches like we going on now.
2) After a month or so(bonus points for telling the pre-order people whenish in the sales copy) you offer the full pack in the zen store as round 2 of "be the first to get the shiny thing".
3) You break the pack up as they have done now to catch any stragglers and maximize whatever sales are left to make on the product.
That is why I said it was a pretty bonehead play because while what I have detailed might not get you insane pre-order numbers it will not burn your bridges. People that want to be the first to have something will pay just as they always have before. The F2P business model is paying for speed boosts and helpers, so by this logic your pre-order boosts you to the front of the line to say you have the newest race and items FIRST(not exclusively). It also explains that this will become less rare as time goes on, but at that point the "new car smell" has worn off and people are not mad.
Of course some people might still be bitter even after all that, but it would pale in comparison to the blowback they have seen over this pack since launch. You can't please everyone all the time, but you can totally launch a product without nuking most of your repeat buying customers.
I'm at my core an IT consultant, but I also help other businesses with marketing plans. I do not claim to be God's gift to marketing, but I can give you my number if you need me guys
And for the life of me I can't figure out why people who feel like this game has been indefensible since Mod 1 are still here.
Dunno, I hang on to games much longer than I should even after I stopped enjoying it. A browser game that was done so badly I played for a year when really I should have just given up at the start all because I wanted to reach the centre of the map which was the goal... Another game I played was league of legends, a pretty good game with a vastly superior payment system may I add. I played thousands of games and it kind of got old for me, yet I kept playing purely to keep unlocking all of the champions which I had already managed to do for free. In this game you pay more, and for that premium you get a multitude of bugs that take ages to fix and yet affect gameplay hugely, content that is massively inferior to the game the previous year, bad marketing, and bad design in general. The fact that they let the economy be destroyed twice in a year and the consistent bug releases should be enough for people to realise that the game is not worth defending. It could have been a great game but with the way it's been handled I wish failure upon them and probably would take back my whole playtime if I could. If I didn't make 1.5m AD/week passively I probably would've stopped playing already. The only gameplay left for me to progress is dailies and if I wanted solo content, I'd play something else that isn't repetitive and has a better story.
It took them a whole month to fix dragon hoard coins. That is just completely inexcusable for something that was such a simple fix. I'm very fair in my judgements, but there is just too much to criticise that it's just not worth defending them. Some people thanked them for fixing the economy... yeah after months and letting the backlog reach 15m. Any other company that has standards and people would be laid off if they let something similar happen.
Respect is earnt, and I'm not going to respect a company that has done too much to disrespect us.
While I have seen a great many less than good changes made to the game it has not been 100% terrible.
becomes your yardstick for staying with a game, then some evaluation of your criteria might be in order.
The paradigm is in fact to nickle and dime people out of as much cash as possible, while investing as little as possible into the product. That's the reality of the free (no) to play publishing model.
When becomes your yardstick for staying with a game, then some evaluation of your criteria might be in order.
The paradigm is in fact to nickle and dime people out of as much cash as possible, while investing as little as possible into the product. That's the reality of the free (no) to play publishing model.
I think f2p has the potential to work well. I am unsure whether it's actually a good thing though as to make up for the people that don't support the company, the ones who do tend to spend a lot more, especially here. However in the case of here I think it's more to do with them not knowing how to effectively price things.
There's no reason why a f2p game can't be beneficial to players, the game and the publisher. However it's easy for the publisher to be greedy.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
There's no reason why a f2p game can't be beneficial to players, the game and the publisher. However it's easy for the publisher to be greedy.
Greed works both ways. A simple perusal of this forum and you'll find that a lot of players want everything, and don't want to pay for anything. And yet they get a crazy amount of content, full access to every part of the game and no restrictions on character advancement for free. And right now Neverwinter is putting out content faster than even your average $15 pay to play MMO.
I'll say this until I'm blue in the face...Neverwinter offers up more content with little to no restrictions, and does it in such a way that's more fair to the players than any other mainstream MMO out there. In fact, I challenge you to find one that gives free players access to more stuff, totally for free, without strings attached.
And after saying that, it puts a lot of this thread in perspective. The Dragonborn race and the Dragonborn Legend pack that people are complaining about are completely and absolute superfluous. You don't need either to enjoy the game, experience the content, or max out your character. They're 100% completely optional, and in no way provide any sort of extra bonus or level of power that's outside of what a player can obtain by just playing the game.
And after saying that, it puts a lot of this thread in perspective. The Dragonborn race and the Dragonborn Legend pack that people are complaining about are completely and absolute superfluous. You don't need either to enjoy the game, experience the content, or max out your character. They're 100% completely optional, and in no way provide any sort of extra bonus or level of power that's outside of what a player can obtain by just playing the game.
BRAVO THIS ^.
Hence, threads like this only serve to highlight and accentuate the ridiculous entitlement attitudes of people: "Who cares if it costs a hundred-thousand dollars a month to keep the game running, I deserve it for free!". Paraphrased of course, but not far from the mark. I'm not trying to champion Cryptic Studios in this comment, but rather to put the entitlement crowd into their rightful place - you know who you are even if you refuse to admit it to yourself.
As for those who purchased the full Dragonborn Legend pack for $75 and now complaining about a lesser race/reroll-only option for 1/3rd the price: no one twisted your arm to buy the bigger pack. YOU had no patience, YOU had the "gottahavitnow" itch and so YOU made the decision to buy, now you're gonna whine and cry that there's a lesser expensive option that contains none of the "now it's valuable enough" items like the account-wide bag and artifact and ring, etc - available? Stand beside yourself and listen to your own diatribe.
It's just business 101 in terms of how all this unfolded and sure, some of you can LOL at that statement, but I actually run a business, so I know what I'm talking about. At least my customers aren't as whiny about it.
FACT: It's a good thing that the DB Legend Pack is available in the Zen Market.
FACT: It's a good thing there is a lesser DB-only pack for less money.
FACT: Anyone complaining how they were "cheated" in any way shape of form need to reevaluate their grasp on reality.
FACT: If you disagree then you also need to check your own selfishness at the door - you got what you paid for; caveat emptor.
Is Cryptic indemnified in everything they do? Hell no. But they are human, sure they screw-up a lot, but nowhere near as much as the complaints in these forums proclaim so often. As for the whole free-to-play thing: It's all a grand experiment and nothing better than this. If it's so easy how about you go out and create your own F2P MMO. Good luck with that.
PROTIP: It's Cryptic's house and you are a *guest*. If you don't like it then go play another MMO. Many people already have, great for them. And so what if you've "spent thousands upon thousands of dollars here!!11!ONE!!1!" - you got what you paid for and you made that choice. But if you're still here then at least get a clue: you buy, play, and do because it's worth it to you or you wouldn't even be here.
Comments
The point is that the price changed. Price changes happen. They decided they didn't want to sell the dragonborn pack for $100 so they reduced the price before anyone even bought it for that. Again, price changes happen. Much better that way. As opposed to them charging more for it, then reducing the price after people payed more. You can't make money angering your customers that way.
Which all of that is besides the whole other new 'bundle' they are offering. Which is a great idea imo. For those who won't/can't get the more expensive pack.
All I'm saying is that if you're putting an offer to reward your early buyers. You better freaking reward them. Can't really say anything else without repeating myself. As I've said the bundle isn't what I object to, it's the way they've handled the situation that I do. For that there's no reason for me to spend my money ever again considering they've made it completely unrewarding every single time. Luckily they make it easy to do that by making the game not as interesting as when it first came out. I planned not to spend more an earlier time, I should've kept to that, but being an inventory hog the sale and bag space tempted me.
Yeah, I think I'm kinda going round and round here too. I just disagree. Its a lot harder to raise a price later than it is to lower it. And imo the people who bought it early didn't actually lose anything. Anyway, I'll drop it now. Till weeks later, if this thread is still around and I forget I said this.
And this is true for a lot of people as well.
When the Dragonborn Legend pack came out, I rushed to the website, drooling over new stuff...I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm a sucker for those kinds of things.
Anyway, the little voice in my head kept saying, "$75..really? Really? Are you sure?" And I wasn't. Of course, the other voice said, "Buy now or it'll be $100 later!!!" But I waited on it, and ultimately decided not to buy it.
Then Module 4 launched, I saw it was still on sale, and again the urge to purchase came back. But I held off.
Good for me. I saw it was in the Zen shop at 7500 Zen. On the 15% bonus Zen weekend, I purchased some more Zen, got the bonus Zen of 15% + 600 for the $100 purchase. I then bought it in the cash shop at an overall bigger discount than even the "discounted" $75 price.
Which brings me back to my point. Next time Cryptic does a "big deal special bonus awesome act now pack", they have a much, much higher hurdle to clear before I'll jump on it. It's going to need to be a pretty compelling special, otherwise I'm going to go with my "wait and see" approach that's served me well in the past.
EDIT: And I think one of the easiest ways to do this is to have unique features added to people who buy early. It would've been easy to add a single BoA Rage Drake Mount to the Dragonborn Pack to all those who purchased before X date, instead of advertising a sales price.
In fact, it might be a nice gesture by Cryptic to give everyone who purchased a Dragonborn Legend pack before the expiration date of the "sale" a free BoA Rage Drake as a make up for never actually returning the pack to it's $100 price. And it would also exclude those like myself who got a better deal by buying it in game, as well. And I'd be fine missing out on something like that...probably would've wished I had purchased the pack early for the free mount, actually
If you saved the coupons from a previous event you could get it for even less too like a guildie did. I actually only got a few coupons myself. I should've got more but the game kind of drained my energy to even bother.
Generally I don't expect much and am quite the opposite of greedy. What I do expect though is companies that provide entertainment (for profit) to focus on care for their service and that you make your customers feel valued instead of feel like just a wallet. Yes they're a business that needs to make money, but it's our enjoyment they need to cater for. I really don't know why people even defend them after everything they've done since Mod 1.
Because some of us like what they've done since mod 1? Dreadring was great, the second best mod imo. IWD is ok too. As for ToD... I've said before I love ToD. I like that they expanded on existing areas. I like that lower levels can start it before 60. I like the dragon fights. I like getting the artifact weapon from the campaign. I know not everyone agrees with me though.
I think part of my acceptance of it is that most of my characters I care about are already done with the earlier campaigns. Only my new ones are still working on the earlier stuff. I can imagine it would be quite painful to try to do all dailies on all campaigns at once. I think if their was one thing I would change, it would be to have you go to 2 random zones a day instead of all of them. But that doesn't kill it for me.
And for the life of me I can't figure out why people who feel like this game has been indefensible since Mod 1 are still here.
Heard all of this before when people complained about the pricing and the sudden appearance of the pack on the zen store. Same old song and dance.
Yes, they get to do what they did. No, that doesn't make it any less bovine excrement. Yes, PWE has been using this model elsewhere. No, that doesn't make it a player-focused decision. Yes, PWE is profit-focused and not player-focused. No, that doesn't mean we...the players paying the money PWE is making...have to think it's at all a good business practice.
Yes, that's exactly what he said.
This people never cared about customers just $$ reasons. We still remember "25% discount" of pack for 75$ real money and zen price for 70$ first day of mod 4. Now it is 25$. So the actual value of dragonborn race is 10$ if race re-roll is 15$ as far as i remember.
Pretty much this.
People like myself stick around because we are invested into the game with either money, time or both. While I have seen a great many less than good changes made to the game it has not been 100% terrible. I mean we are talking pretty rough issues, but we have had improvements such as the dungeon keys. I can't be the only one that remembers wasting a whole DD event fighting to the chest only to have people wipe once and rage quit the last boss. That is a prime example that some choices they make for the game are indeed good and move us forward. However, if you believe in something you will want it to improve and the best way to do that is to not sugarcoat your feeling about it. Personally I really like Neverwinter and I want it to succeed and overcome it's many flaws. That is why I stick around and I doubt I'm the only person that feels this way.
Back on the topic of the DragonpackGate(see what I did there) we need to understand this is NOT a court of law. Bringing all this fraud and law talk into it will only cause things to get deleted and locked into the abyss. It was a bonehead marketing play and that is all it will ever be. Folks just need to learn the way they operate as a business and just be smarter next time a "sale" comes along. I am just very bummed out that we never received an official response or some form of "we are sorry" gift for the people that pre-ordered. They did it for Caturday and I for one would like a Dragon Day cloak!
So what did you want them to do when sales at $75 made it clear that they wouldn't sell ANY at $100? Carry on anyway and make zero cash and simultaneously make sure there were never going to be more than a handful of Dragonborn in game? No competent business would make that decision.
People really are getting their knickers in a knot over absolutely nothing. But I guess it's easier to blame an 'evil corporation' than simply accept the consequences of your own decision.
Aelar Hawkwind - Archer
Karrin Feywinter - Mistress of Flame
Errin Duskwalker - Executioner
Darquess - Soulbinder
First off the $25 sale price issue is a lesser grip at best and as a small business owner myself here is exactly how I would of done it if I wanted both make money AND earn customer loyalty. Because you can either make lots of money and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> off customers that never buy from you again, you can have happy customers that earn less than stellar profits or you can ride the middle. You can not just have all the best cash grabs and all happy customers(unless you are selling iphones?).
The winning plan:
1) Pre-order right now and you will be the first to have access to the dragonborn race(plus get sweet items) and pay $75 instead of $100.
1a) You feel that $75 is a better permanent price, but you already sold people on this discount perk. Simple! Give them a rareish item or a small claimable pack with something to make up for the road bump. It costs them nothing to do this and heals the wound of people feeling jilted over the price not going up after launch.
1b)Please note I said "be the first" vs saying "gain exclusive access" and sure the word "exclusive" draws more sales... until they are sales for pitchforks and torches like we going on now.
2) After a month or so(bonus points for telling the pre-order people whenish in the sales copy) you offer the full pack in the zen store as round 2 of "be the first to get the shiny thing".
3) You break the pack up as they have done now to catch any stragglers and maximize whatever sales are left to make on the product.
That is why I said it was a pretty bonehead play because while what I have detailed might not get you insane pre-order numbers it will not burn your bridges. People that want to be the first to have something will pay just as they always have before. The F2P business model is paying for speed boosts and helpers, so by this logic your pre-order boosts you to the front of the line to say you have the newest race and items FIRST(not exclusively). It also explains that this will become less rare as time goes on, but at that point the "new car smell" has worn off and people are not mad.
Of course some people might still be bitter even after all that, but it would pale in comparison to the blowback they have seen over this pack since launch. You can't please everyone all the time, but you can totally launch a product without nuking most of your repeat buying customers.
I'm at my core an IT consultant, but I also help other businesses with marketing plans. I do not claim to be God's gift to marketing, but I can give you my number if you need me guys
Dunno, I hang on to games much longer than I should even after I stopped enjoying it. A browser game that was done so badly I played for a year when really I should have just given up at the start all because I wanted to reach the centre of the map which was the goal... Another game I played was league of legends, a pretty good game with a vastly superior payment system may I add. I played thousands of games and it kind of got old for me, yet I kept playing purely to keep unlocking all of the champions which I had already managed to do for free. In this game you pay more, and for that premium you get a multitude of bugs that take ages to fix and yet affect gameplay hugely, content that is massively inferior to the game the previous year, bad marketing, and bad design in general. The fact that they let the economy be destroyed twice in a year and the consistent bug releases should be enough for people to realise that the game is not worth defending. It could have been a great game but with the way it's been handled I wish failure upon them and probably would take back my whole playtime if I could. If I didn't make 1.5m AD/week passively I probably would've stopped playing already. The only gameplay left for me to progress is dailies and if I wanted solo content, I'd play something else that isn't repetitive and has a better story.
It took them a whole month to fix dragon hoard coins. That is just completely inexcusable for something that was such a simple fix. I'm very fair in my judgements, but there is just too much to criticise that it's just not worth defending them. Some people thanked them for fixing the economy... yeah after months and letting the backlog reach 15m. Any other company that has standards and people would be laid off if they let something similar happen.
Respect is earnt, and I'm not going to respect a company that has done too much to disrespect us.
The paradigm is in fact to nickle and dime people out of as much cash as possible, while investing as little as possible into the product. That's the reality of the free (no) to play publishing model.
I think f2p has the potential to work well. I am unsure whether it's actually a good thing though as to make up for the people that don't support the company, the ones who do tend to spend a lot more, especially here. However in the case of here I think it's more to do with them not knowing how to effectively price things.
There's no reason why a f2p game can't be beneficial to players, the game and the publisher. However it's easy for the publisher to be greedy.
Greed works both ways. A simple perusal of this forum and you'll find that a lot of players want everything, and don't want to pay for anything. And yet they get a crazy amount of content, full access to every part of the game and no restrictions on character advancement for free. And right now Neverwinter is putting out content faster than even your average $15 pay to play MMO.
I'll say this until I'm blue in the face...Neverwinter offers up more content with little to no restrictions, and does it in such a way that's more fair to the players than any other mainstream MMO out there. In fact, I challenge you to find one that gives free players access to more stuff, totally for free, without strings attached.
And after saying that, it puts a lot of this thread in perspective. The Dragonborn race and the Dragonborn Legend pack that people are complaining about are completely and absolute superfluous. You don't need either to enjoy the game, experience the content, or max out your character. They're 100% completely optional, and in no way provide any sort of extra bonus or level of power that's outside of what a player can obtain by just playing the game.
BRAVO THIS ^.
Hence, threads like this only serve to highlight and accentuate the ridiculous entitlement attitudes of people: "Who cares if it costs a hundred-thousand dollars a month to keep the game running, I deserve it for free!". Paraphrased of course, but not far from the mark. I'm not trying to champion Cryptic Studios in this comment, but rather to put the entitlement crowd into their rightful place - you know who you are even if you refuse to admit it to yourself.
As for those who purchased the full Dragonborn Legend pack for $75 and now complaining about a lesser race/reroll-only option for 1/3rd the price: no one twisted your arm to buy the bigger pack. YOU had no patience, YOU had the "gottahavitnow" itch and so YOU made the decision to buy, now you're gonna whine and cry that there's a lesser expensive option that contains none of the "now it's valuable enough" items like the account-wide bag and artifact and ring, etc - available? Stand beside yourself and listen to your own diatribe.
It's just business 101 in terms of how all this unfolded and sure, some of you can LOL at that statement, but I actually run a business, so I know what I'm talking about. At least my customers aren't as whiny about it.
FACT: It's a good thing that the DB Legend Pack is available in the Zen Market.
FACT: It's a good thing there is a lesser DB-only pack for less money.
FACT: Anyone complaining how they were "cheated" in any way shape of form need to reevaluate their grasp on reality.
FACT: If you disagree then you also need to check your own selfishness at the door - you got what you paid for; caveat emptor.
Is Cryptic indemnified in everything they do? Hell no. But they are human, sure they screw-up a lot, but nowhere near as much as the complaints in these forums proclaim so often. As for the whole free-to-play thing: It's all a grand experiment and nothing better than this. If it's so easy how about you go out and create your own F2P MMO. Good luck with that.
PROTIP: It's Cryptic's house and you are a *guest*. If you don't like it then go play another MMO. Many people already have, great for them. And so what if you've "spent thousands upon thousands of dollars here!!11!ONE!!1!" - you got what you paid for and you made that choice. But if you're still here then at least get a clue: you buy, play, and do because it's worth it to you or you wouldn't even be here.
Pardon me while I pop-up some fresh popcorn.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
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