The Vyrus living up to his name lol not to mention the **** they did on summoner appreciation? When did Cyber Monday even become a thing? Black Firday is the day for sales and people also have the weekend to "purchase" which is the key word it's not free to enjoy what they buy
Actually, it’s a clever bit of customer base research: throw the same offer out year over year and evaluate things like how well efforts to accelerate new account progression has worked, whether the newer portfolios of accounts behave like the old ones, degree if inelasticity of offer responses within different classes of accounts, etc.
No reason not to recycle an old offer when you know you have the Cyber Monday mulligan to trot out newer, “better” offers and tee up the cycle all over again.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to chalk it all up to laziness, because that would mean missing a major opportunity to learn valuable insight about your paying player base. It also whets the appetite even more for players to check in Monday at 1PM EST. Well done, Kabam...just my thoughts...
Dr. Zola
While I agree with your analysis, I still feel like it's a slap in the face of players who bought this last year.
Why not have an uncollected offer at 60% of the price? Or reduce the price of an offer on repeat for everyone who bought it in the past?
Actually, it’s a clever bit of customer base research: throw the same offer out year over year and evaluate things like how well efforts to accelerate new account progression has worked, whether the newer portfolios of accounts behave like the old ones, degree if inelasticity of offer responses within different classes of accounts, etc.
No reason not to recycle an old offer when you know you have the Cyber Monday mulligan to trot out newer, “better” offers and tee up the cycle all over again.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to chalk it all up to laziness, because that would mean missing a major opportunity to learn valuable insight about your paying player base. It also whets the appetite even more for players to check in Monday at 1PM EST. Well done, Kabam...just my thoughts...
Dr. Zola
No it was not a good play. Was not clever at all. Maybe its just my MBA speaking, but market research should have been done prior to the biggest sales day of the year, at least in the USA.
Actually, retail relies on “Black Friday” far more than many online businesses, especially mobile games. And even retail has been moving the start gates more and more the last several years and mashing it into more of a 5-day event in the US.
Kabam’s offers are deliberate. And the data gleaned from those offers and responses to them is invaluable. I didn’t mean to imply this was solely customer research, but the MCOC audience is far more captive than someone shopping for a toaster or a fridge. Hard to find a T2a or a 5* Aegon at Best Buy.
Well I’m going to pick up a ps4 game today. Market research doesn’t have to tell anyone but me it’s a good deal. There are good deals out there....just not here. LOL
Dr Zola that may work for some specific markets but the mobile and gaming market are much more dynamic.
Actually, Zola is describing a fundamental monetization idea that's pretty much universally used across all of the F2P gaming world.
It is the people who say "the game has progressed" that don't understand how this works. The offers aren't targeted at "the game." They are targeted at people. And this game has, and always has players of all progression levels from multiyear veterans ro people who started playing literally yesterday. How valuable an offer is has nothing directly to do with "game progress" only with player progress. An offer that is worth nothing to a multiyear veteran might be worth a huge amount to a new player.
Offers must target a range of players across the game for a number of economic and psychological reasons. Although new players today earn things at different rates than veterans used to earn them, it is still true that T4B is a bottleneck resource at intermediate levels of progress. That offer might be a boring repeat for veterans, but it is a shiny new offer for newer players that can still save them months of gameplay grind. As long as players continue to buy them, Kabam will continue to offer them because for a large segment of the playerbase the offer is still relevant.
Actually, it’s a clever bit of customer base research: throw the same offer out year over year and evaluate things like how well efforts to accelerate new account progression has worked, whether the newer portfolios of accounts behave like the old ones, degree if inelasticity of offer responses within different classes of accounts, etc.
No reason not to recycle an old offer when you know you have the Cyber Monday mulligan to trot out newer, “better” offers and tee up the cycle all over again.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to chalk it all up to laziness, because that would mean missing a major opportunity to learn valuable insight about your paying player base. It also whets the appetite even more for players to check in Monday at 1PM EST. Well done, Kabam...just my thoughts...
Dr. Zola
No it was not a good play. Was not clever at all. Maybe its just my MBA speaking, but market research should have been done prior to the biggest sales day of the year, at least in the USA.
Your MBA is telling you Kabam is a factory selling widgets and the objective is to maximize the profits by optimizing the selling potential of those products. Your MBA is wrong in this case. It is usually not the objective of an F2P game to maximize sales. The object is to maximize revenue while injecting the minimum amount of resources into the game as possible. If a game operator forgets the second half of that goal, they tend to become a pay to play game (and MCOC is nowhere near that no matter what kind of hyperbole gets tossed around) and usually the game self-destructs soon after.
The kind of market research an F2P game has to perform is not "what are people willing to pay for?" It is the more subtle "what is the minimum value that people are willing to pay anything for?" This is, or rather should be, monetization 101.
Hahahahaha. Best kabam move ever. Everybody loses!
Read that one of the origins of Black Friday is that refers to how company financial books have become red to black - from losses to PROFITS. Guess kabam’s Accounting dept is not yet complaining about revenue, so no Black Friday for everyone!
You all act as if this game's developers owe you something. They don't, an offer was made and if you don't like it don't buy it.
I get upset at things they do as a company too, but they do have the right to do what they want and you have the right to not play or make purchases.
Actually, they do owe us something. You forget, the purchase of units and gems is what pays Kabam Employee’s salaries and keeps the game alive. It is a symbiotic relationship that relies on two parties (developer and end users).
In order to keep the game alive and competitive, we are owed a much better deal than this. In turn, we keep the game we all love going and Kabam employees employed. Win-win.
While not all offers are intended for all players, the issue is the perceived value Kabam has compared to majority of the player base is way off.
I want to keep the gaming going and would be more than happy making a purchase, but I am owed more value with the current meta of the game.
You really like to flag people opinions on their thoughts right ? Tough to accept something that basically you did wrong. I will not say who I am referring to but you know yourself you big guy !!
By the way for a flag on myself to get , I think as being Black Friday and this is about discounts , would work something a bit better if you could get discounts for units , like 3 dollars for 135 , somewhere 6/7 dollars for 275 units and so on , only for a day as it is Black Friday, and I am pretty sure is the community would be a bit happier as cyber Monday is coming and maybe you have some deals where can be purchase with units , as the one that basically you did today
Have a nice day
First time posting, but I'd love to know what the player breakdown is for this game. For example, I'm a casual F2P solo player. I've been playing about a year, and I only recently got a 3rd T4CC, and I do not get T4BCs or T1 alphas easily. The rewards for solo F2P players are obviously very different than for others. In terms of value, this deal strikes me as just fine. First of all, it's free as I'm sitting on 4.5K units. Also, I don't get what people are complaining about in terms of value. Until recently, it's costed 100 units to get a PHC that almost always yields a relatively useless 2* hero (now 80 units for me). I would love to have the option of using 200 units on a T1 alpha or 300 units on a T4BC in the store. Sure it would be great if they were even cheaper, but for comparative value seeing what hero and shard crystals go for? I'm curious as to what folks think a reasonable number of units would be for a T1 alpha, T4BC, and T4CC. I mean, it's not hard to farm 100 units in a day or two for a casual player like me.
With this offer, I'm getting 6 T4BCs, 8 T1 alphas, 1 T4CC, and some gold and T2 alpha catalysts for 2400 units. Again, it's free for me and the math breakdown seems totally reasonable, if not crazy good for a black Friday deal.
I get that this isn't for everyone, but same goes for all the content and offers in this game, as the alliance-playing vets like to point out, and fairly. Maybe I'm an anomaly as far as the player base goes, but maybe not. I think the more fair criticism is that Kabam should have offered something else, but maybe that's coming on Monday. Just my 2 cents, anyway.
1. Last year Cyber Monday had both bonus cash offers (they added bonus items to the unit packs) and unit offers (they sold bundles for units). Cyber Monday is really the "good offer day" not so much Black Friday. They didn't even call today's offers "Black Friday" offers, just "catalyst celebration bundles." If they don't appeal to you, just wait for Monday.
2. Don't sweat flags. If someone flags you for spam or abuse, all that does is force a Kabam mod to read your post. If it isn't spammy or abusive, then nothing happens except Kabam employees have to read your post. There's no down side to that.
First time posting, but I'd love to know what the player breakdown is for this game. For example, I'm a casual F2P solo player. I've been playing about a year, and I only recently got a 3rd T4CC, and I do not get T4BCs or T1 alphas easily. The rewards for solo F2P players are obviously very different than for others. In terms of value, this deal strikes me as just fine. First of all, it's free as I'm sitting on 4.5K units. Also, I don't get what people are complaining about in terms of value. Until recently, it's costed 100 units to get a PHC that almost always yields a relatively useless 2* hero (now 80 units for me). I would love to have the option of using 200 units on a T1 alpha or 300 units on a T4BC in the store. Sure it would be great if they were even cheaper, but for comparative value seeing what hero and shard crystals go for? I'm curious as to what folks think a reasonable number of units would be for a T1 alpha, T4BC, and T4CC. I mean, it's not hard to farm 100 units in a day or two for a casual player like me.
With this offer, I'm getting 6 T4BCs, 8 T1 alphas, 1 T4CC, and some gold and T2 alpha catalysts for 2400 units. Again, it's free for me and the math breakdown seems totally reasonable, if not crazy good for a black Friday deal.
I get that this isn't for everyone, but same goes for all the content and offers in this game, as the alliance-playing vets like to point out, and fairly. Maybe I'm an anomaly as far as the player base goes, but maybe not. I think the more fair criticism is that Kabam should have offered something else, but maybe that's coming on Monday. Just my 2 cents, anyway.
Even F2P, this deal is not good... you can get 2 T4B and 3 T1A via arena almost weekly. If you are in an alliance, you get 5-6+ T1A with Glory and 3+ T4B every AQ. Not to mention all the T4CC frags... This is all free... you just need the right alliance.
Comments
Credit to Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ContestOfChampions/comments/9u1pa4/past_4th_of_july_black_friday_cyber_monday_deals/?st=JOUEQQEO&sh=6f346e85
While I agree with your analysis, I still feel like it's a slap in the face of players who bought this last year.
Why not have an uncollected offer at 60% of the price? Or reduce the price of an offer on repeat for everyone who bought it in the past?
Actually, retail relies on “Black Friday” far more than many online businesses, especially mobile games. And even retail has been moving the start gates more and more the last several years and mashing it into more of a 5-day event in the US.
Kabam’s offers are deliberate. And the data gleaned from those offers and responses to them is invaluable. I didn’t mean to imply this was solely customer research, but the MCOC audience is far more captive than someone shopping for a toaster or a fridge. Hard to find a T2a or a 5* Aegon at Best Buy.
Dr. Zola
Actually, Zola is describing a fundamental monetization idea that's pretty much universally used across all of the F2P gaming world.
It is the people who say "the game has progressed" that don't understand how this works. The offers aren't targeted at "the game." They are targeted at people. And this game has, and always has players of all progression levels from multiyear veterans ro people who started playing literally yesterday. How valuable an offer is has nothing directly to do with "game progress" only with player progress. An offer that is worth nothing to a multiyear veteran might be worth a huge amount to a new player.
Offers must target a range of players across the game for a number of economic and psychological reasons. Although new players today earn things at different rates than veterans used to earn them, it is still true that T4B is a bottleneck resource at intermediate levels of progress. That offer might be a boring repeat for veterans, but it is a shiny new offer for newer players that can still save them months of gameplay grind. As long as players continue to buy them, Kabam will continue to offer them because for a large segment of the playerbase the offer is still relevant.
Your MBA is telling you Kabam is a factory selling widgets and the objective is to maximize the profits by optimizing the selling potential of those products. Your MBA is wrong in this case. It is usually not the objective of an F2P game to maximize sales. The object is to maximize revenue while injecting the minimum amount of resources into the game as possible. If a game operator forgets the second half of that goal, they tend to become a pay to play game (and MCOC is nowhere near that no matter what kind of hyperbole gets tossed around) and usually the game self-destructs soon after.
The kind of market research an F2P game has to perform is not "what are people willing to pay for?" It is the more subtle "what is the minimum value that people are willing to pay anything for?" This is, or rather should be, monetization 101.
Read that one of the origins of Black Friday is that refers to how company financial books have become red to black - from losses to PROFITS. Guess kabam’s Accounting dept is not yet complaining about revenue, so no Black Friday for everyone!
Actually, they do owe us something. You forget, the purchase of units and gems is what pays Kabam Employee’s salaries and keeps the game alive. It is a symbiotic relationship that relies on two parties (developer and end users).
In order to keep the game alive and competitive, we are owed a much better deal than this. In turn, we keep the game we all love going and Kabam employees employed. Win-win.
While not all offers are intended for all players, the issue is the perceived value Kabam has compared to majority of the player base is way off.
I want to keep the gaming going and would be more than happy making a purchase, but I am owed more value with the current meta of the game.
By the way for a flag on myself to get , I think as being Black Friday and this is about discounts , would work something a bit better if you could get discounts for units , like 3 dollars for 135 , somewhere 6/7 dollars for 275 units and so on , only for a day as it is Black Friday, and I am pretty sure is the community would be a bit happier as cyber Monday is coming and maybe you have some deals where can be purchase with units , as the one that basically you did today
Have a nice day
With this offer, I'm getting 6 T4BCs, 8 T1 alphas, 1 T4CC, and some gold and T2 alpha catalysts for 2400 units. Again, it's free for me and the math breakdown seems totally reasonable, if not crazy good for a black Friday deal.
I get that this isn't for everyone, but same goes for all the content and offers in this game, as the alliance-playing vets like to point out, and fairly. Maybe I'm an anomaly as far as the player base goes, but maybe not. I think the more fair criticism is that Kabam should have offered something else, but maybe that's coming on Monday. Just my 2 cents, anyway.
2. Don't sweat flags. If someone flags you for spam or abuse, all that does is force a Kabam mod to read your post. If it isn't spammy or abusive, then nothing happens except Kabam employees have to read your post. There's no down side to that.
Even F2P, this deal is not good... you can get 2 T4B and 3 T1A via arena almost weekly. If you are in an alliance, you get 5-6+ T1A with Glory and 3+ T4B every AQ. Not to mention all the T4CC frags... This is all free... you just need the right alliance.
It's an offer which happens to fall on Black Friday, not a Black Friday offer.
Oops ... that's me.
If it prevents them from kicking puppies on the way home from school, it is a fair trade.