Question about Offers

Can anyone on the game team provide some insight into the target audiences for current/recent offers? Please understand--this isn't a critique of offers per se (ergo, no need to post reminders not to buy if it doesn't suit me), but rather an inquiry about what the game team is seeing in game that prompts them to offer the items that have been offered lately. I'm assuming there are reasonable rationales behind the last few offers and their value propositions, but I confess they elude me.

Guidance would be appreciated.

Dr. Zola

Comments

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TillerTheKiller

I think it is random with no pattern or logic to throw us off. Then when they put out a deal that every one likes, people eat it up.

Thawnim

TillerTheKiller wrote: »

I think it is random with no pattern or logic to throw us off. Then when they put out a deal that every one likes, people eat it up.

I agree. It's probably a marketing test to see what offers people respond to the most.

DrZola

I'm not passing judgment; instead, I'd just like to get a little insight into why/how the team sees a need for some of the items offered. Understanding their pricing thought process would be nice, but I don't expect that. Just a commentary like "we recognized there were a lot of players clamoring for more T1/T2/T3C availability so we thought selling them for $20 would be well received by the community." At least it would explain a bit where they were coming from.

DZ

Thawnim

DrZola wrote: »

I'm not passing judgment; instead, I'd just like to get a little insight into why/how the team sees a need for some of the items offered. Understanding their pricing thought process would be nice, but I don't expect that. Just a commentary like "we recognized there were a lot of players clamoring for more T1/T2/T3C availability so we thought selling them for $20 would be well received by the community." At least it would explain a bit where they were coming from.

DZ

How many units do they offer a tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3 catalyst for after you complete the daily quest both times? My guess is if you totaled the number of units for that and compared it against the "offer" they would be fairly close.

mostlyharmlessn

I'm thoroughly convinced there's this wheel that spins much like the wheel that has various denomination of dollars at a casino.

Kabam provides game team employees Kabam Dollars ranging from 1.99 to 99.99 or Unit cards that are worth units in 100, 300, 500, 1000, 3000, 4000, 5000 denominations.

The game team employees place their bet on the table and wheel spins which ever employee wins denotes the price of the offer.

A second smaller wheel game spins with a number ranging from 1 - 10, and whatever number it stops on that winning employee gets to pick that many tickets out of a bag and each ticket represents an item that will be included in the offer.

VandalSavage

Thawnim wrote: »

DrZola wrote: »

I'm not passing judgment; instead, I'd just like to get a little insight into why/how the team sees a need for some of the items offered. Understanding their pricing thought process would be nice, but I don't expect that. Just a commentary like "we recognized there were a lot of players clamoring for more T1/T2/T3C availability so we thought selling them for $20 would be well received by the community." At least it would explain a bit where they were coming from.

DZ

How many units do they offer a tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3 catalyst for after you complete the daily quest both times? My guess is if you totaled the number of units for that and compared it against the "offer" they would be fairly close.

Using the "standard" that $10 gives you 275 units or $1 per 27.5 units.

A $20 offer is equivalent to 550 units. I don't keep track of how much the offers were for those cats. When they come up, I ignored them so I'll let someone else figure out the costs of those cat offers and compare them to 550 unit cost of this latest offer. But let's give it a number just for kicks -- 30 units.

The value of not having to spend the time grinding out those cats is obviously worth a grand total of 0 units. Your time is free as always.

Then there's the 250,000 gold that don't exist in this offer (judging from the other thread on this topic).

The golden crystal costs 20 units each. Assuming an average of 5000 gold per crystal (which we all know is a bit high), then that's 250k/5k = 50 crystals or 1000 units worth. If we use a more realistic average of 3000k then the value rises to 250k/3k = 83 crystals or 1660 units. So in other words, don't use the more realistic average. Let's use the bloated average instead.

So we are now at 1000 + 30 = 1030 units.

There's also the 20x tier 5 ISOs that people (in the other thread on the same topic) pretend don't exist. I have no idea how much in units those costs but let's assume it's 20 units.

So the value is 30 + 1000 + 20 = 1050 units. Thus, instead of spending 1050, you are spending 550 which works out to be a (550 - 1050)/1050 = 47.6% discount.

However, the ISOs and gold don't exist so there's no discount. You are actually overpaying by 550 - 30 = 520 units or by about $18.91.

Finally, I thought that it is obvious that a player that started 5 weeks ago is automatically equivalent to 2.5 year player and therefore don't need offers like these anymore. Why in the world would a 5-week player need these cats in the first place? They should be focusing on tier 4 basic cats and class cats at that point. And, of course, nobody is interested in what a 4-week player does with his money.

What they should have done is only give out these offers to 4-week players so that we can have the opportunity to complain that only new players get these offers -- like we use to do back in the old days.