So lets be constructive

WannaBM - Archosaur

Lets constructively ask for another marketing policy. Not only for me, i am a successful merchant remember? I can get my orbs at 50gold if i'd want to, i am probably a more successful marketeer than PWI is in some way.... No i ask for another policy because the current one is very damaging to the longevity of this game.

The current policy attempts to get the highest price for items by selling them at rediculous prices on moments that customers are most likely to buy them.

GSTs are being on sale without MOGs. Last r9 sale they did this too, they pulled the sales appart but they were more greedy and less smart about it. They sold mogs first and GSTs later. The MOGs being only the small part of the R9 investement, they probably hoped to sell the larger part off-sale. Now they have smartened up a bit and i am sure they succeeded in selling quite some MOGs off-sale. Many of us of course are still waiting with our GSTs in the bank for the MOG sale to come. Thats why the MOGs are not on sale this week. Test everyones patience a bit more.

2 ocean sales ago, the price was all of a sudden hiked up from 25gold to 35 gold. We were outraged and the next sale they came back down to 30gold. Seemed like they wanted to make some concession. Now they areback at 50 gold while the 11* and 12*s are on sale as well and many people have just gotten their R9 with overpriced mogs. Clearly the reasoning must be that this will be the moment when they can squeeze the 50 gold out of people.
I wonder what must have been the thinking when someone entered 155 gold for the 12* orb. I would normally think its a typo, but now am inclined to think its a childish little price increase made by some baby marketeer who is grinning over his 50 gold ocean orbs and wants to add another 5 gold there just because he can.

Popups are added when we almost die.

This type of marketing achieves the following goals:

1) It aggravates their customers and reduces the respect for PWI across the board, from the casual player to the heavy cash-shopper. A reduced respect for your company can never be a good thing. On the long term it will reduce the player base across the board and thus your income.

2) Less items are given out for the same amount of gold, thus increasing their coin value on top of an already inflating coin per gold price. This makes the future for the casual gamer look even more dire and the game will be less interesting for them. Fewer will have their hopes up of ever reaching something that resembles endgame and more may decide never to even start attempting this. This is not only the non-shopper, it also includes the small and medium cashshopper.

3) While i think many cash shoppers allot themselves a certain budget for their gaming and thus wont increase their spending, surely on the short term some may spend more. They decided to get R9 so *** it that they will have to pay more for the MOGs and the +10. But some of those might also decide that it gets above their budged so they might not buy anything at all. So raising your prices will have only a tiny positive effect on your short term turnover. It is not food or fuel you are selling.

So we got this tiny short term possitive effect against heavy long term negative effects. If you keep up this marketing strategy, you will have to get more agressive in applying this strategy when the long term effects start having their toll. A snowball effect leading to a soon death. This whole process has obviously been going on for a while already. More have complained about it before, the ball is rolling down the hill and its getting very heavy now.

Instead since you are only selling bits and bytes, you could reduce the price of old items, make more sales for new items (catalysts) to give the game new vigor. Some items could be taken out of the cash shop and be sold for coins to give the casual gamer some relieve. Good sales that make everyone happy can not only be good on the short term (sales are always good for short term turnover) they can also be good for the long term as it will make everyone happy, have a more positive attitude to the game in general and gives players the feeling that they might actually get somewhere with a bit of cash shopping.

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver

Like I said before in this forum:

A smart game company SELLS free user time to paying users.
A dumb game company SELLS game items directly.

The intelligent way to do is to give free players the ability to get all items (at a time/difficulty expense). And give in-game money to paying users to buy anything they want FROM free players.

Except vanities like fashions/mounts/flyers.

This way everyone wins: The company makes more profit, free user makes more profit, paying user gets things cheaper. And: Game gets more balanced, more people (rather than few) will be inclined to put REAL MONEY into the game.

Its ironic how Perfect World is a self-claimed "Biggest Community-driven MMORPG", and completely ignores the community.

Edit: Items/categories that should be removed from gshop and added In-game are: War catalysts, Luck Packs, Refining aids, Dragon orbs, Reputation chips, Mysterious Chip packs, Medal of glory, HP/MP charms.

Except HP/MP charms (which should be sold by an NPC), the other items should be rewarded from in-game PvE or PvP instances (or minor rewards exchangeable for them)
Everything tradable of course: So cashing users can buy f2p users efforts.

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

I do agree something needs to change.

For a casual player like myself, I pretty much have to farm everything. Unfortunately, bot-farming is not cost-effective for any of my toons, and manual farming, is returning less reward than it used to.

So basically, I play the same amount, make less money, and everything I have access to costs more. Which really really sticks when I need to purchase something like an HP or MP charm that has skyrocketed in price just because of greed and lack of sales. Event Gold used to be a nice workaround at times for getting the small charms, but access to that is even more limited to me than it was before.


Basically, the current game economy, is driving out the casual player that makes the community enjoyable. It's no surprise that the player community has been in a drastic decline over the past 2-3 years.

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver

Indeed, the current game management drowns casual-users and leave space only for ultra-hardcore gamers who open up 12 or more game clients to auto-culti/catshop and cashing users.

Even like: The ultra-hardcore player feels sick for being forced into extreme effort to have such low pay-off, the cashing user feels robbed for having to pay such high prices to get geared/refined. (And if they don't then they should probably seek medical help)

Desdi - Sanctuary

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Indeed, the current game management drowns casual-users and leave space only for ultra-hardcore gamers who open up 12 or more game clients to auto-culti/catshop and cashing users.

Even like: The ultra-hardcore player feels sick for being forced into extreme effort to have such low pay-off, the cashing user feels robbed for having to pay such high prices to get geared/refined. (And if they don't then they should probably seek medical help)

...and to add to that; since the non-cashopper crowd is being driven away, the remaining cashopper crowds have less people to play with. Less people farming/playing/doing stuff means less fun which leads to killing the incentive of charging zen.
Nobody would feel the need to charge zen and "gear up" if they can't really enjoy the game with others and the majority that plays MMORPGs plays them so they can play with and/or against others.

LuckingFoco - Raging Tide

As I said in the orb price thread, PWI lost a sale this week of $420+ US from me. The amount of zen I will be buying is zero, even though my weapon is presently +10, had the +10 orbs been 25 or 30 gold I would have bought plenty of them plus one +11 orb and one +12 orb.

But I stand on principle. As a cash shopper, I don't like feeling the squeeze, nor do I like them pushing my non cash-shopping friends further towards the door. I bought plenty of chips last week to complete my R9 armor, and won't be tempted to buy MoGs unil they are on sale. But I definitely will NOT be buying their +10 orbs at 50 gold.

So PWI enjoy my purchase of ZERO zen.

Jarkhen - Archosaur

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Like I said before in this forum:

A smart game company SELLS free user time to paying users.
A dumb game company SELLS game items directly.

The intelligent way to do is to give free players the ability to get all items (at a time/difficulty expense). And give in-game money to paying users to buy anything they want FROM free players.

Except vanities like fashions/mounts/flyers.

This way everyone wins: The company makes more profit, free user makes more profit, paying user gets things cheaper. And: Game gets more balanced, more people (rather than few) will be inclined to put REAL MONEY into the game.

Its ironic how Perfect World is a self-claimed "Biggest Community-driven MMORPG", and completely ignores the community.

Edit: Items/categories that should be removed from gshop and added In-game are: War catalysts, Luck Packs, Refining aids, Dragon orbs, Reputation chips, Mysterious Chip packs, Medal of glory, HP/MP charms.

Except HP/MP charms (which should be sold by an NPC), the other items should be rewarded from in-game PvE or PvP instances (or minor rewards exchangeable for them)
Everything tradable of course: So cashing users can buy f2p users efforts.

^ This, this, a thousand times this.

When you force players to buy gold to get things (r9, refines) that are necessary to experience some aspects of this game (end-game PvP / TW, in this case), you are hurting everyone. People who can't afford to cs gold (or refuse to) and are unable to spend inordinate amounts of time farming or merching are completely unable to participate in what is likely the biggest selling point for this game. People who can farm or merch to get those items are upset because of the amount of effort it takes (and the fact that that effort is increasing daily with the predatory marketing practices PWE is using). Cash shoppers end up less likely to spend money as well -- because (1) it's more expensive, and (2) there are fewer and fewer people that they'd actually be able to compete with if they did. What's the point of buying r9r3+12 josd if there's nobody left to use it against?

So you have people spending less and less money, and you have them doing it more and more begrudgingly. Make these items directly farmable (not in the farm-40-hours-a-week-for-a-year-to-be-semi-viable form it's in now), as Sev mentioned, and then use zen to allow cash shoppers to bypass the farm, and things will run much better. Population will increase, which not only means more potential people buying things but also means each person will be more tempted to stay and to spend money because of the increase in available competition.

Spending money in a "free-to-play" game should be optional. Use it to allow people to bypass things they don't want to do, and use it to give people customization (fashion, w/e). I was never "happy" about the idea of spending hundreds upon hundreds of gold to get my r9 and refines. It felt like I was being pressured into it because there's no real alternative if you want to be properly competitive. But that rifle weapon fashion? It's not necessary; I don't feel pressured into buying it; but it looks damn awesome so I was more than happy to drop some gold on it. There's a significant difference here, and it's one PWE seems to be ignoring entirely.


To sum it all up nicely, I think:

Organize things so that the game could potentially be played by 100% free-to-play users, without a single person paying. Don't put anything in the boutique that is necessary -- endgame gear, etc.

Then use the boutique for cosmetic and quality-of-life things. Want to bypass dailies? Spend money. Want fash? Spend money (or buy gold from other users). Want endgame gear without working for it? Sell gold for coin and use the coin to buy the gear. Don't make the gear or required items directly purchasable with gold. This is the key difference -- let the market be driven by the free-to-play aspect, and you'll entice a lot more participation in the paying aspect.

hypereccentrik

Unless I'm missing something here, these are all online non physical items. Meaning there is no stock of Dragon Orb Oceans in boxes warehoused away, nor is PWE short on them awaiting a back order to come from China...
With that I am trying to say what purpose does having a higher then used to price, do to help the company?
Raising the prices on virtually supply free items just ailenates the f2p and casual cser crowds. Last thing anyone wants is to frusturate more players into playing elsewhere.
A positive direction for marketing to turn to would be to sell more items like flyer enhancments, also I was watching a PWCN video and the author was showing the quest completion stone. Depending how it actually works I would defenitly get that for the dailies : p

WannaBM - Archosaur

Surely it should be farmable as easy as G16 of course but it should be an achievable goal. As it is now, R9 alone may be a somewhat achievable goal to farm, but real end game gear isnt.

If it is a more achievable goal, more players will start doing it. And i think PWI doesnt need to worry much that they wont CS anymore. People are lazy and out of the many more people that now have their dreams of reaching endgame alive, lots will resort to CSing when they are halfway and getting tired of the farming. Because all of us can dream about what we can farm much better than what we actually end up farming b:chuckle But if even dreaming of end game is futile, it kills the whole motivation and many people wont even get to the point where they would be willing to CS.

trands

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Like I said before in this forum:

A smart game company SELLS free user time to paying users.
A dumb game company SELLS game items directly.

The intelligent way to do is to give free players the ability to get all items (at a time/difficulty expense). And give in-game money to paying users to buy anything they want FROM free players.

Except vanities like fashions/mounts/flyers.

This way everyone wins: The company makes more profit, free user makes more profit, paying user gets things cheaper. And: Game gets more balanced, more people (rather than few) will be inclined to put REAL MONEY into the game.

This makes me wonder how much you really know about the subject. All depends on a multitude of factors, but let's just simplify and give another smart game company example :

Step 1:
The intelligent way to do is to give free players the ability to get all items (at a time/difficulty expense). And give in-game money to paying users to buy anything they want FROM free players.
Yes, exactly what you said. The company is so great for their customers, blablabla. But ofc, it's a company and the extend of caring is limited to their own interest just like most, if not all, human beings.

Step 2:
Gradually introduce gear upgrades through cashshop at rather cheap prices. Create a form of competition among players.

Step 3:
Drive prices up and make balance shift. The competition factor will make them spend more on changing classes and simply to be able to participate in the endgame content. The community itself will make good gear a norm to play with.

Meanwhile:
1$ now > 1$ tomorrow. All collected from step 2 and 3 is put in other game(s). Games with newer engines, graphics and all the flashiness that attracts new players. After all, can't make publicity around an old game with out-dated mechanics and graphics.

Step 4:
Time will come to retire the game. Give all a % of their spending in your virtual currency. Spending players often want shortcuts. Many will go to a game in step 1 or 2. Some f2p might follow them. Many f2p will go elsewhere and avoid your games, but who cares. Other games got their f2p base already. Putting the spending players in another game that already is running is just pure win.

It's just a possibility among many others that are all equally rational. It's not in my personal interest either what they are doing, but acting like it's so irrational and stupid is just not true. If it were as easy as you make it sound, there would be no misery or unemployment in the world. There are many different interests at stake, many different visions and even more angles of approach.

Sir_comsizer - Archosaur

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Like I said before in this forum:

A smart game company SELLS free user time to paying users.
A dumb game company SELLS game items directly.

The intelligent way to do is to give free players the ability to get all items (at a time/difficulty expense). And give in-game money to paying users to buy anything they want FROM free players.

Except vanities like fashions/mounts/flyers.

This way everyone wins: The company makes more profit, free user makes more profit, paying user gets things cheaper. And: Game gets more balanced, more people (rather than few) will be inclined to put REAL MONEY into the game.

Its ironic how Perfect World is a self-claimed "Biggest Community-driven MMORPG", and completely ignores the community.

Edit: Items/categories that should be removed from gshop and added In-game are: War catalysts, Luck Packs, Refining aids, Dragon orbs, Reputation chips, Mysterious Chip packs, Medal of glory, HP/MP charms.

Except HP/MP charms (which should be sold by an NPC), the other items should be rewarded from in-game PvE or PvP instances (or minor rewards exchangeable for them)
Everything tradable of course: So cashing users can buy f2p users efforts.

Said all this before, fell on deaf ears.


PWI care about nothing but profit, and always will. They bite their own noses off to spite their faces

Fryvorg - Sanctuary

In China, Dragon Orb 1*'s to 5*'s can be exchanged by Supply Tokens. If they introduced this here, it will help at least a little to stabilize the refining market. And it's already in the game files, so not really an effort to implement.

Edit: Nvm, I just looked in pwdatabase if you can combine them. As I feared, you cannot. Sooo, if those orbs could be combined to make higher orbs, it would help the refining market a little lol

Strife_son - Sanctuary

Things you won't find in this thread:
>Posts from the CM

Management of the boutique is the one thing PWE has control over. They pick the sales. They set the prices. Would they ever take into account player feedback on how to make the game more enjoyable/sustainable? No. Where is the rationale in the constant changing price of the Ocean Orb?

The economic problems mentioned in this thread are of no concern to the people operating this game. Their philosophy seems to be "if people want it, they will buy it, regardless of price".

Servetje - Morai

Strife_son - Sanctuary wrote: »

Things you won't find in this thread:
>Posts from the CM

The economic problems mentioned in this thread are of no concern to the people operating this game. Their philosophy seems to be "if people want it, they will buy it, regardless of price".

And realisticly players think.

Yes i want it!
But i wont buy at this price.

Till pwe pushes more and more.

Then the players will think, sorry pwe your prices are to expensive for me.

Then some conversations will follow among the players:
Anyone knows a better game then pwe Guy's?
Well yes the players mention.
Friends have good experiences with this game
Ow cool let me try that game.

Verenor - Morai

Fryvorg - Sanctuary wrote: »

In China, Dragon Orb 1*'s to 5*'s can be exchanged by Supply Tokens. If they introduced this here, it will help at least a little to stabilize the refining market. And it's already in the game files, so not really an effort to implement.

Edit: Nvm, I just looked in pwdatabase if you can combine them. As I feared, you cannot. Sooo, if those orbs could be combined to make higher orbs, it would help the refining market a little lol

The pwdatabase got revamped during New Horizons and no longer shows the proper ways to create Dragon Orbs from Supply tokens (or I'm missing something, but I've seen the crafting from Supply tokens on there before).
PWE should by all means work towards integrating Dragon Orbs into in-game content and not Boutique-only content. Keeping this short, ranted enough about the subject and tired of getting worked up over it.

Neferhotep - Lost City

What always annoyed me is the fact that you have to rely on our CS. In a FREE to play game, just as others already said, nobody should be forced to CS. And im not talking about the easy vs hard way and how people are too stupid to make money ingame. I am making enough money, legal and without botting and i know if i wouldnt be too lazy id have r9rr easily.

Im talking about a simple fact: If there are no CSers anymore, everyone is screwed. It shouldnt be like that, but it is. If theyd take out MOGs and Chips of the boutique, it would take forever to get those items, no matter if farmer, merchant or CSer. This would make a great disadvantage for all players, cause many people have r9rr already. The end of the story would be those people dominating the server without anyone being able reach their heights.

I am not against those items being in CS, but i am against people being able to sell their gold to others. IMO things would be a lot better if wed have a certain gold price (lets say 1,5 mil, since getting coins is already a lot easier than before) and the gold we buy is given away by PWE directly, not by players. CSers can still make good money by using a mix of CS and merchant, buying when its on sale and selling the items later. This way it wouldnt be too easy for CSers, but they can make money. When items need a great amount of gold, CSers will prefer using real money anyways - especially if they plan to use those items themselves and not selling them.

Because, seriously, there arent many people spending money anymore. There are usually just a few spending high amounts of money but this is nothing compared to what it used to be . The amount of sellers and buyers is completely outbalanced, what makes people buying overpriced gold. The more players are dissapointed because of patches or mssing communication, the lesser gold will be in AH. Its not like they arent playing anymore, theyre just not using Cash.

Like i said in another thread, i do really think PWE wants this game to be left behind by the playerbase. They have new games. Those games make profit as well and they made many new costumers with it. But they dont have enough GMs looking after all games. We can see that many GMs either left or have to jump between games they actuallly wouldnt look after because there is no one else to do it. So it would be a lot easier if the playerbase of old games like PW or JD would just jump over to a game they have on focus right now. I can understand this is a problem, but people wont just jump over. There are reasons people still love the game itself, and till there is another game with same mechanics and graphics, just in a modern and balanced way, many people wont leave at all.

Longknife - Harshlands

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

Lets constructively ask for another marketing policy. Not only for me, i am a successful merchant remember? I can get my orbs at 50gold if i'd want to, i am probably a more successful marketeer than PWI is in some way.... No i ask for another policy because the current one is very damaging to the longevity of this game.

If I were a GM I would permaban every **** who claims to be an amazing OP merchant just to make a point about how many of you ****ers think you're the best **** ever while the truly great merchants sit AFK with five shops all while being too busy to brag. This is slowly developing into a "brag about merching = instantly get laughed at/facepalms ensue" sort of thing.


On topic: this game will be dead soonish (still takes months) unless a future update reverses the daily demand of the last. You cannot join PWI without expecting to be utterly worthless for a good half a year based on spirit alone. No **** we don't get newcomers because no one wants to spend a good 2 hours a day doing monotonous, tedious dailies just so they can open up the window of opportunity to FIND OUT if they like the PVP or not. The last update was geared at keeping old players in, not at expanding.


Oh and the economy sucks because farming has become rather limited, so that's great too.

SakuLv - Dreamweaver

I kinda was hoping that this week will be MoG Sale but oh well
I can wait another 2 month or so
Me getting r9 can wait a lil longer

Euthymius - Heavens Tear

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

\
Edit: Items/categories that should be removed from gshop and added In-game are: War catalysts, Luck Packs, Refining aids, Dragon orbs, Reputation chips, Mysterious Chip packs, Medal of glory, HP/MP charms.

I think that would be a nice start. I do agree with the idea of other important items like these being farmable as well. A friend once suggested that WA Catalysts be implemented as a tradeable reward for Undercurrent Coins in UCH for example

SHIMBERLY - Heavens Tear

Isnt a sale going on now??? Like 25g for MOG??? I meen..how low yo uwant it to freakin go???

Right now with gold prices the weapon and ring cost close to a billb:bye

God__himself - Archosaur

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

I do agree something needs to change.

For a casual player like myself, I pretty much have to farm everything. Unfortunately, bot-farming is not cost-effective for any of my toons, and manual farming, is returning less reward than it used to.


So basically, I play the same amount, make less money, and everything I have access to costs more. Which really really sticks when I need to purchase something like an HP or MP charm that has skyrocketed in price just because of greed and lack of sales. Event Gold used to be a nice workaround at times for getting the small charms, but access to that is even more limited to me than it was before.


Basically, the current game economy, is driving out the casual player that makes the community enjoyable. It's no surprise that the player community has been in a drastic decline over the past 2-3 years.

I completely agree on this, I am also a free user myself and I thought farming rrr9 at 2.0mil gold was already a lot, now gold is at 2.8mil... My coins are losing too much value, I can farm maybe 10mil an hour with my sin in TT which 2 years ago was farming 10 gold an hour and today its maybe 3.5 gold even though it is still the same amount of coins.


PWI screwed up when they made R9 obtainable only through the boutique so free users are forced to buy gold at whatever the price is then. While cash users pay the same exact price in cash as they did two years ago.


When the US economy experiences inflation they usually apply policies to prevent it. However in PWI if gold prices go up people want to spend their coin now in fear of coins further losing their value which only causes inflation to skyrocket even faster.


I wouldn't be surprise when gold reaches the 4mil cap (if I am not mistake) in a couple of months. By then I may retire from PWI as for end game free users are becoming close to extinction and cash is being written all over a Free to Play MMORPG.


There are tons of other mmorpgs I've seen recently and would be more fun to play without the fear of the game suddenly becoming pay to play and less time consuming to farm end game gear.b:sad

PooEA - Lost City

So it seems that Sparkles is not responding to this thread of constructive criticism despite his previous effort of emphasizing how this was the way to go.

He posted http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1693871
in the meantime so I doubt he missed seeing this thread.

I say we return to our primitive but fail-safe ways to voice our complaints loudly until they cannot ignore us!

PITCHFORK ASSAULT TIME b:angry

$picylovah - Sanctuary

PWI is very confusing with their usage of the word 'Sale'

1. Having something available in boutique that normally isnt, is oftenly celebrated by the word sale.
2. And then when an actual sale comes around they will more clearly specify the actual percentage this sale is taking off the original price

now if u look in the post regarding the dragon orbs, nowhere will u see a percentage, this meaning it is option 1 rather than option 2.

http://community.arcgames.com/en/news/pwi/detail/5005973-dragon-orbs-in-the-boutique%21

Next time before u get excited when u read about a sale, first check out the post, to find out which of the 2 'Sales' PWI is talking about here, this will save u a lot of disappointment.

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver

@trands I do understand that strategy, but it is still a fail strategy, a mismanagement.

I could list here companies that manage to get high profit from 1 single game. What PWRD could do was to add more employees and a specific management team for each game (instead of trying to manage all games with the same team) because what happens is: Each and every game ends up dying some time and who loses from all this, is only the customer.

That company with R with the game with L, I guess everyone knows what I'm talking about: Their development team works really hard to keep their game both balanced and bug-free, their management team struggles with server problems and managing game trolls, but their marketing team is audacious and impressive at the point of investing in musicians and studios to publish/promote their game. In that game, everyone can get whole contents (except vanity items), whole advantage without spending 1 single dime, and still, it has a very high revenue/profit.

Again: No company has 100% perfect management, its probably a big struggle to keep everything together and working well. But the way PWRD does it is simply repugnant.

MageMERC - Harshlands

You guys know your stuff, but you're telling the wrong people. Surely there is a way to email Wanmei directly????

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

MageMERC - Harshlands wrote: »

You guys know your stuff, but you're telling the wrong people. Surely there is a way to email Wanmei directly????

There is, though some of this is controlled by PWE also.

I've posted the information before. b:victory

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver

Let me spoil your childhood fellow.

From what I understand, PWE is a chinese company with an office in the USA to serve PW International. But they're all the same whole damn thing.

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

There is, though some of this is controlled by PWE also.

I've posted the information before. b:victory

^ +1

Jaabg - Sanctuary

My constructive advice.

1) Either fire your marketing team, or make them take economics and make them really understand the basic micro economics.

Pwi has amazing sale data available. You have items where you have the monopoly. You can set the supply. You need to set the supply at such a point where you get the max revenues for the company. Not the "theoretical" max revenue.

Just because last sale people charged 100k dollars to buy orbs, across all servers, that you will get 100k dollars this time as well.

If there is nothing else your marketing team can learn. Give them an intensive seminar in "Price elasticity"

Just by understanding that one concept, your sale prices will improve. When i used to merchant charms before, i used price elasticity, and i was able to go from one borrowed charm to 220 charms over a year time.

Please try to get the notion out of your head that higher price = more money. The formula for revenue = Price x Quantity. Price and quantity have a negative relationship for normal goods. If you raise one, the other falls. You need to find those magic points where raising the price will get you the most money, or by decreasing the price will get you the most money.

There are lots of good people on these forums, who tell you how to fix things, only have to listen and not rage at them for being noobs and don't know how pwi (the company you are employed in) works.

_JlN_ - Heavens Tear

Let me play devil's advocate since this thread has all been one sided so far.

Firstly, my perspective comes from a f2p (don't know why that matters but it seems to since it has been metioned numerous times on these forums and I'll boast a little about my ingame successes since I really enjoy the gaming aspect of farming/merchanting what I have) so I can understand some of the frustrations such players are going through. I no longer merchant since coming back but I auto culti and I am also very patient and will wait on sales.

1. Prices and sales are not always the same and one should not expect perfect world to continually offer the same sale prices over and over. Price elasticity, companies know this and that is why sale prices flucate. The price you paid for your monitor may not be the same price as someone who paid for their monitor who may have even paid full price. As an in game example someone who will to charge $150 for a 12 star may flinch a little at the $5 increase but will buy the 12 star for $155 anyway.

2. Their goal is simple, to maximize revenue but do you know their marketing strategy to achieve it? In game is quite different, beat your competition while making a profit, the more the better. For PWI, their competition is other games but as for ingame items, they have no competition. Perhaps their strategy is working as players are now asking for orbs at $25-$30 when previously there was outrage and demand for 5 x 10 star for $100. They flash this $50 price from time to time, cause some out rage from a few but once they have that $30 sale people jump.

3. As for farmers and those after r9. With some things prices have risen dramatically like packs. They were on sale when gold was much cheaper and in part caused gold prices to rise. Those were good times. With rank 9 the cost of that in terms of coins has remained about the same, just recently costing more. When it first came out there was no sale on it for the longest time you need 1500 gold. Now you can get it at 50% off, 750 gold, thus allow for a double in gold price yet the overall price in terms of coin has not changed. Yes, coins have devalued but you can still find ways to make the most of them.

I was hoping to pick up some 10 stars and was especially looking forward to getting some MoG but I will have to wait. Who knows there might be a special 2 day MoG sale this weekendb:thanks

Jaabg - Sanctuary

_JlN_ - Heavens Tear wrote: »

interesting ideas

I can safely say price elasticities are not applied to boutique items with respect to zen charged.

I was here when gold was 1~1.8m, orbs were 100 for 5. Each orb = 20 gold, get the gold at 1m, cost for a f2p = 20m.

Raise price to 25 gold, outrage, gold creeping close to 2m at that point due to later in the year sale. Ocean orb costs about = 50m.

Longest time, no sale, people were willing to offer 80m for the ocean orbs i forgot on my alts.

Ocean orbs on sale 30 gold, gold is about 2.8m, let's say 3m for ease of calculation. Ocean orb cost 90m.

35 gold, gold is still 3m, that is about 105m per ocean orb.

Now gold is about 3.5m oceans are 50 gold, oceans are 175m roughly.

Price went from 20m to 175 in about two years.

We take the two figures, 100m and 175m (assuming 175 is just a silly mistake).

Inflation in 2 years went to 400% on ocean orbs for 100m.

Inflation in 2 years went to 775% on ocean orbs for 175m.

Gold price has tripled over two years now.

A person who was making money back in the day, what ever mean possible (farming) has to work 4x as much now to afford things.

Farming item prices have not gone up by 4x. Cogs used to be 1.5~1.8m, that are now about 3m, that is 2x price increase. TT mats, lunar mats = fixed price, can't be above chip price. I don't think there is any other farming item in game that has gone up in price 4x or more. FCC used to 1m per room, now is 1.5m. Skill books might be an avenue, i haven't explored. Pages cost about 1/3 now, hf that was about 80~100m before is about 20m now. Only a few psy, sin skills are costly.

The smart thing to do would be to shift these farmers into charging zen when they realise farming is not cutting it, and a slight investment will get us the stuff. People who purely charge, will keep on charging (different beast).

Your ideas do make sense, but remember elasticity is about the stuff happening around the point, that will tip the balance. People who charge, no matter the price will charge. People who do not charge, will not charge zen. It is for those people, who are not charging, but maybe a 5 gold drop in price may make them charge the zen, which otherwise they wouldn't have.

Cytte - Harshlands

Jaabg - Sanctuary wrote: »

Inflation stuff

golds actually gone up about %1000 since i played, more if you include when it was 100k

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver wrote: »

That company with R with the game with L, I guess everyone knows what I'm talking about: Their development team works really hard to keep their game both balanced and bug-free, their management team struggles with server problems and managing game trolls, but their marketing team is audacious and impressive at the point of investing in musicians and studios to publish/promote their game. In that game, everyone can get whole contents (except vanity items), whole advantage without spending 1 single dime, and still, it has a very high revenue/profit.
.

A few major differences though, you know other than you're comparing a Moba with no f2p player marketplace to an MMO with multiple markets, are that Rito can fix things they know about and don't have to pass on this that will maybe get fixed, A large portion if not all play the game fairly regularly and know whats going on.