Looking for clarification on upcoming 1 Gold booster (for those who bought the $20 pass)

Searmenis

Peckle07 said:

Searmenis said:

Peckle07 said:

Searmenis said:

Peckle07 said:

Kabam Miike said:

That is correct. If you purchased the Plus Pass, and Claim the 7 Day Milestone booster from the store, and complete every objective, you'll earn 1400 6-Star Shards.

You do see the issue with the devaluation though right? I personally bought the Plus Pass only for that 7-day grace period that was not available otherwise. I did not buy it for the 700 extra 6* shards, so this change does not mean anything to me. If I knew we would be getting a 7-day grace period essentially for free, I would not have paid $5 more. I hope you see the problem with this and how it could affect potential deals in the future. It's very concerning if you are not aware how this comes off as shady.

There s no devaluation since you are getting two times the extra shards, the game doesn't sit there and thinks "oh, but there s also this Peckle guy who don't want the shards, just a few days extra". The INITIAL difference between pass and pass plus, was the 7 days SHARDS, not a falesafe. If you want to use your shards to buy an extra day, it's your choice.

Plus, if kabam decided to do the 1 gold deal only for the ftp players, we would ve had now at least 10 Peckles screaming that they got the pass plus for the extra days for $5 (even if they didn't in the first place and they just like to get grumpy over minor details), and the ftp players now get it for free! Outrageous! Burn the (scarlet) witches!

First of all, you're wrong. The PRIMARY selling point of Pass Plus was the 7-days of milestones being instantly acquired (i.e. 7-days of grace period, if you are not able to understand). I bought it for that grace period, not for 700 extra shards. You know why? Because there was no grace period available for everyone and I had missed a day already due to how stupid the setup was. This means the only reason I spent an extra $5 was to get grace days.

Simple fact: now that the previously unavailable 7-day grace period is available to everyone, I spent $5 for basically nothing. You're gonna say "bUt nOW yOu gET 700 mORe sIX-StAR shARdS". That's not the point. That's not why I bought it in the first place, so it doesn't matter. Maybe an analogy would help you understand why this is an issue. Imagine that you bought a VIP pass to a concert that allows backstage access or something. The next day, they announce that everyone is gonna get backstage access. So now as a bonus, you get a water bottle. Do you think this is okay? Did you buy the VIP pass for the water bottle or the backstage access? I'm sure there is a better analogy and value-wise it's nowhere near a fair comparison, but the idea is the same.

Finally, as others in this thread pointed out, there is a huge difference between 0 vs 7 and 7 vs 14. I couldn't care less about getting the extra 7 days because I play the game everyday. I'm not gonna need more than 7 days at all. So having 14 days of grace period has 0 value for me. So, yes, there is devaluation, because of why I bought it in the first place.

Well, I bought it for the shards, so no, there isn't.

Good for you. I DIDN'T, so yes, the deal is heavily devalued for me.

we re not talking about you or me, in general it s not. 700 6* shards in kabam s system cost more than $5.

GroundedWisdom

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

DeadPooop

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

The 98 day event was mas with 98 milestones 1 a day... If u missed a day or didnt complete one u shouldnt be given the opportunity to fix it for 1 gold, u should be forced to buy a 20 dollar package as well then.
The 20 dollar package for 7 days so you can get to your last milestone (500 units and an AG) is a lot closer in value to 7 extra days or objectives making it a total of 14 for 5 dollars...

LeNoirFaineant

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

How does getting what you paid for at the time have anything to do with being devalued? Things aren't devalued at the time you buy them, they are devalued after you buy them. If you bought Mark McGuire's 70th single season home run ball, it really was worth what you paid for it at the time. That doesn't in any way negate the fact that it was devalued when Barry Bonds hit 73. More to the point, if people paid for Amazon Prime, and then Amazon makes it free for all Amazon customers, the people who paid for Prime would rightly want their money back.

DeadPooop

Peckle07 said:

LeNoirFaineant said:

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

How does getting what you paid for at the time have anything to do with being devalued? Things aren't devalued at the time you buy them, they are devalued after you buy them. If you bought Mark McGuire's 70th single season home run ball, it really was worth what you paid for it at the time. That doesn't in any way negate the fact that it was devalued when Barry Bonds hit 73. More to the point, if people paid for Amazon Prime, and then Amazon makes it free for all Amazon customers, the people who paid for Prime would rightly want their money back.

Honestly it baffles me how people don't understand this lol

It doesnt to me.. its the f2p players that felt screwed on their own fault and now they are happy cause they got a solution that NOT ONLY GIVES THEM THE LAST MILESTONE BUT SHARDS...

DNA3000

Ebony_Naw said:

It sounds to me like what you are saying is that behavioral economics only studies how people deviate in decisions. But deviate from what? The answer is deviate from classic economics theory. What brilliant minds like Kahneman and Thaler realized is that the basic assumption that everyone acts rationally is plainly false, and we actually exhibit various biases that affect most people in a given set of circumstances. Such as the fact that we'd spend more money and capital in order to "save" money depending on how it is framed.

I actually wouldn't say that. But this gets deep in the weeds. I can at best outline the issue here. The traditional objection by classical economists is that behavioral economists add nothing fundamental. If we discover that people are, say, loss averse, we don't have to throw out classical economic theory to incorporate that. We can simply state that rational actors take the reasonable rational course of action to avoid the subjective but real trauma of loss. They calculate they will feel bad if they experience loss, and take logical steps to avoid that feeling. In other words, behavioral economics is just classical economics where the subjective pursuit of illogical goals becomes the rational pursuit of subjective goals. All actors become rational again.

In my opinion, this entire discussion focused on the wrong side of classical economics: the rational actor side. It should have focused on the other, less flashy but equally important side from the point of view of behavioral economics: the perfect information side. In classical economics we assume rational actors all have perfect information, either complete information, or in some cases incomplete information but still perfectly accurate information. Without this assumption, it is hard to understand what rational actors will do. Rational actors can be made to do anything if we feed them the right (wrong) information. Garbage in, garbage out.

Behavioral economics doesn't just focus on the mechanics and psychology of valuation and decision making. It also looks at what information is factored into decisions and when. Non-rational actors might not only choose to make logically irrational decisions, they can choose to accept or ignore different subsets of the information at their disposal. They can choose to factor in a piece of information today, and ignore it tomorrow. Because of this, they can be situationally or temporally inconsistent, and they can evolve dynamically. This kind of dynamism is something I don't think classical economics can either incorporate or hand wave away. Classical economics can claim irrational decisions are really rational if you pick the right priorities, but it cannot claim that inconsistent decisions are equally rational when there's no input into the system.

If we think of behavioral economics as just the study of how psychological factors cause economic behavior to differ from classical predictions, we in a sense restrict behavioral economics to have the same "parts" just rearranged, or have the same "trajectory" just fired in a different direction. But I believe that behavioral economics, which is still in its infancy, isn't just quantitatively different from classical economics, it assumes a completely different shape. We just don't know what that is yet, because that kind of dynamism hasn't been fully studied yet.

GroundedWisdom

LeNoirFaineant said:

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

How does getting what you paid for at the time have anything to do with being devalued? Things aren't devalued at the time you buy them, they are devalued after you buy them. If you bought Mark McGuire's 70th single season home run ball, it really was worth what you paid for it at the time. That doesn't in any way negate the fact that it was devalued when Barry Bonds hit 73. More to the point, if people paid for Amazon Prime, and then Amazon makes it free for all Amazon customers, the people who paid for Prime would rightly want their money back.

It has a lot to do with it.
Let's say I buy some shoes for 90 bucks. I get the shoes I paid for at 90 bucks.
A couple weeks later, they go on sale for 75 bucks. Does it suck I missed the sale? Sure. Did I get what I paid for? Absolutely.

GroundedWisdom

Peckle07 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

Do you know why most people paid for it? Because there wasn't any grace period available. I paid to "unlock" something that was only available by purchasing a pass. Now everyone gets that for free, which in turn devalues my purchase.

Can you grasp this concept? If not, there is no point in continuing this discussion.

I'm aware that *some* people bought it for that express purpose. Yes. At the time it was sold, there wasn't.

IKON

GroundedWisdom said:

LeNoirFaineant said:

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

How does getting what you paid for at the time have anything to do with being devalued? Things aren't devalued at the time you buy them, they are devalued after you buy them. If you bought Mark McGuire's 70th single season home run ball, it really was worth what you paid for it at the time. That doesn't in any way negate the fact that it was devalued when Barry Bonds hit 73. More to the point, if people paid for Amazon Prime, and then Amazon makes it free for all Amazon customers, the people who paid for Prime would rightly want their money back.

It has a lot to do with it.
Let's say I buy some shoes for 90 bucks. I get the shoes I paid for at 90 bucks.
A couple weeks later, they go on sale for 75 bucks. Does it suck I missed the sale? Sure. Did I get what I paid for? Absolutely.

A couple weeks, sure. Days? Most companies will give you the sale price if you return.

Edit: to be honest, this analogy doesn't really track anyway. MCOC is far more akin to selling a service than a product, nothing you buy is every truly yours.

GroundedWisdom

IKON said:

GroundedWisdom said:

LeNoirFaineant said:

GroundedWisdom said:

The 7 day grace period purchased does not devalue in any way. People paid for it, they got it. They still have it, regardless of the response to others. No one knew it was going to be given as a courtesy because that decision wasn't even made yet. So point of fact, people got what they paid for at the time.

How does getting what you paid for at the time have anything to do with being devalued? Things aren't devalued at the time you buy them, they are devalued after you buy them. If you bought Mark McGuire's 70th single season home run ball, it really was worth what you paid for it at the time. That doesn't in any way negate the fact that it was devalued when Barry Bonds hit 73. More to the point, if people paid for Amazon Prime, and then Amazon makes it free for all Amazon customers, the people who paid for Prime would rightly want their money back.

It has a lot to do with it.
Let's say I buy some shoes for 90 bucks. I get the shoes I paid for at 90 bucks.
A couple weeks later, they go on sale for 75 bucks. Does it suck I missed the sale? Sure. Did I get what I paid for? Absolutely.

A couple weeks, sure. Days? Most companies will give you the sale price if you return.

Not all companies will. That's not the point. The point is the intention was to have no grace period. That changed. Regardless, you can't split the Offer into individual advantages. It's a package deal.

GMAX77

What I see is that it boils down to this:
1) Initially those who spent the extra $5 did so to have access to something that they could not have access to otherwise

2) The lack of a grace period provided a very real issue for many in the community (especially those who had already missed a day)

3) There was outcry and request that Kabam do something to "fix" the situation

4) The solution resulted in virtually giving away the thing that originally could only be gained through the $5

5) Those who initially paid the extra, will get everything they paid for, in addition to 700 more 6 star shards

Ultimately, let's all be honest here...I would assume that the majority of people who bout the grace days would not have spent the money if they had any inclination they could have done so for the price of 1 gold. Unfortunately the granting of the "1 gold grace" is the solution which was decided on. This move probably benefits the vast majority of the community (which is great), but it still is reasonable to understand the sting for those who paid feeling they were only doing so for something they couldn't get otherwise. There was no perfect way to handle this I guess, and in the future many will see this as a reason to be a little more cautious and prudent in what we spend our money on.

Jahnybravo

firstly, the biggest mistake people are making here is thinking the buyers intention affects the seller's intention. kabam wasn't selling grace days they were selling extra milestones. yes, you may have decided to buy those extra milestones as a stand in for grace days, but that wasn't their intention with the original product. They arent at fault that the secondary use you found for the product is less valuable, because the primary use they intended (extra shards) still functions as it should.

secondly, imagine Nike comes out with a new line of shoes and a bunch of people (including you) buy them. Unbeknownst to Nike, the laces for these shoes kinda fall apart real easily so you end up losing yours. You're annoyed at Nike but you like the shoes, so begrudgingly you go and buy a new pair of laces so you can continue to wear the shoes. However, it turns out a bunch of people complained to Nike about the laces so Nike turns around and sends everyone who has the shoes a new pair of better laces. Now you have two pairs of laces when you only needed one, and yes it's Nikes fault, but don't forget, the main purchase was the shoes which still function perfectly fine and they did their part in replacing all the faulty laces so you either try and get a refund for the laces you bought that you no longer need or you move on with your life. You don't whine at Nike for replacing bad laces because that's what they should do in that situation.

so basically, ask for your refund or move on with your life. if they refuse to refund, then you can complain. but dont complain before you even try

DeadPooop

Jahnybravo said:

firstly, the biggest mistake people are making here is thinking the buyers intention affects the seller's intention. kabam wasn't selling grace days they were selling extra milestones. yes, you may have decided to buy those extra milestones as a stand in for grace days, but that wasn't their intention with the original product. They arent at fault that the secondary use you found for the product is less valuable, because the primary use they intended (extra shards) still functions as it should.

secondly, imagine Nike comes out with a new line of shoes and a bunch of people (including you) buy them. Unbeknownst to Nike, the laces for these shoes kinda fall apart real easily so you end up losing yours. You're annoyed at Nike but you like the shoes, so begrudgingly you go and buy a new pair of laces so you can continue to wear the shoes. However, it turns out a bunch of people complained to Nike about the laces so Nike turns around and sends everyone who has the shoes a new pair of better laces. Now you have two pairs of laces when you only needed one, and yes it's Nikes fault, but don't forget, the main purchase was the shoes which still function perfectly fine and they did their part in replacing all the faulty laces so you either try and get a refund for the laces you bought that you no longer need or you move on with your life. You don't whine at Nike for replacing bad laces because that's what they should do in that situation.

so basically, ask for your refund or move on with your life. if they refuse to refund, then you can complain. but dont complain before you even try

I guess u r forgetting the part that the event was not BROKEN, theres a bunch of people who didnt miss a single day and still benefit.
Also they were not selling MILESTONES, THEY where selling 7 days in advance. Thats the only reason i bought it. And they are not replacing laces... They are giving benefits to other people and screwing the people who actually bought the benefits.

GroundedWisdom

The bottom line on my end is many people buy things for many different reasons, even if the reason is a selling point. That much is subjective. However, the purchase itself is not devalued or defective in any way. Everything purchased is still intact. People are still getting exactly what they paid for. That much is logical, rather than subjective.

IKON

The real bottom line is that consumers deserve to be able to make an informed choice about their purchases.

10or_Strong

Wow, next time I shall be more careful of what I try to type in the 2 minutes I have between meetings when trying to comment on a thread. While I have enjoyed reading the semantics discourse my post triggered, I apologize that in my haste I made a poor use of the word "objective" in my post. I was honestly trying to ask people's opinions as someone not really affected, and now realize I should have said something like "impartial" instead (since I've been playing far more casually lately and really don't have a strong opinion either way, knowing I well may not make every milestone).

But then you all for the lovely debate!

DeadPooop

The bottom line is that a company does not get to tell you what your money is worth.
They sell a product, they put a price... Consumer decides to buy or not.
U cant tell a consumer.. "hey remember those 5 extra bucks u paid?.. well they are gonna be worth 7 extra days from the we are giving for free.. so enjoy those 700 extra shards"

GroundedWisdom

IKON said:

The real bottom line is that consumers deserve to be able to make an informed choice about their purchases.

How would they inform people of a decision before it was even a thing?

Clyneva

DNA3000 said:

Saying they changed the value of the product is not an objective perspective, it is a subjective perspective. Objectively speaking, they did not change the value of the product. The product granted seven milestone points for five bucks (USD). It did before, it does now.

It is a subjective perspective to say that the value changed, because that's based on the subjective perspective of someone who wanted the additional milestone points more before, and less now.

This is a rather strange statement to see coming from you, considering some of the lengthy analysis you've posted in the past on the devaluation of player power and resources in the game. It is obvious you are very familiar with the concept of objective devaluation of in-game items in response to the developers' changes to a resource's scarcity, demand, and utility. But for some reason you don't draw a parallel here?

Objectively the value of this product changed because the environment surrounding the product has now changed in several ways:
1.) Previously, these extra milestone could only be bought for $5, now 7 has been given to everyone for free. This is a change in scarcity. It went from a premium/exclusive product to now something everyone already has a copy of.
2.)The number of total milestone you need to finish the event has now been decreased. Previously you needed to play 98/98 days to finish the event. Now you only need to play 91/98 days. This is an indirect mechanical change to the event that has relieved the pressure (and thus demand) to buy these milestones.
3.)Related to (2), the utility of grace days is not linear. Their usefulness goes down as you acquire more of them. Going from 0 to 7 has much higher intrinsic value than going from 7 to 14, because people intent on getting all the milestones are much more like to miss between 0-7 days of logging in than between 7-14 days.

All three of these are objective changes to the game itself that has lower the inherent value of this product.

Now... Do I think people should get refunded? Part of me want to say that devaluation is built directly into this game and is to be expect (e.g. at some point years ago I bought a 4* awakening stone for $50). But on the other hand, this all happened within a week and was likely unplanned. So it seems only fair to give people a chance to reconsider these changes to the product.

Searmenis

Bottom line is, the majority of ppl who spent the extra $5, the ones who did it for the 6* shards, we are very pleased with the outcome. Thank you kabam!

Doctorwho13

Jahnybravo said:

firstly, the biggest mistake people are making here is thinking the buyers intention affects the seller's intention. kabam wasn't selling grace days they were selling extra milestones. yes, you may have decided to buy those extra milestones as a stand in for grace days, but that wasn't their intention with the original product. They arent at fault that the secondary use you found for the product is less valuable, because the primary use they intended (extra shards) still functions as it should.

secondly, imagine Nike comes out with a new line of shoes and a bunch of people (including you) buy them. Unbeknownst to Nike, the laces for these shoes kinda fall apart real easily so you end up losing yours. You're annoyed at Nike but you like the shoes, so begrudgingly you go and buy a new pair of laces so you can continue to wear the shoes. However, it turns out a bunch of people complained to Nike about the laces so Nike turns around and sends everyone who has the shoes a new pair of better laces. Now you have two pairs of laces when you only needed one, and yes it's Nikes fault, but don't forget, the main purchase was the shoes which still function perfectly fine and they did their part in replacing all the faulty laces so you either try and get a refund for the laces you bought that you no longer need or you move on with your life. You don't whine at Nike for replacing bad laces because that's what they should do in that situation.

so basically, ask for your refund or move on with your life. if they refuse to refund, then you can complain. but dont complain before you even try

Uh dude. First paragraph is based on a false premise. They could buy the extra milestones if that’s all they wanted with the regular pass. The plus pass had the grace days. So we know what the sellers intentions were. And that was to sell grace days.

IKON

GroundedWisdom said:

IKON said:

The real bottom line is that consumers deserve to be able to make an informed choice about their purchases.

How would they inform people of a decision before it was even a thing?

That's why there's a responsibility on Kabams part. Those affected should contact support.

DeadPooop

48 hours after sending a ticket, still no response

Searmenis

Why do I see available the $5 booster in store, even though I bought the $20.00 pass? Wasn't there supposed to be the 1gold thing somewhere?