The math in this video is laughable (but I don't think math is the problem)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfV5i7frbI0

I need to start by saying that as a rule, I do not single out or directly attack content creators, regardless of whether I agree with them or not, and I'm not doing so here. Whether I agree with their positions or not, in general I believe they have the right to express themselves any way they see fit to their audience. And I'm explicitly asking anyone replying to this thread not to attack the messenger. This is about the message. It is something that has been bugging me for a while, and while it is not something unique to this content creator, it is something that is almost signature to their position on the way cash offers should be valued and this time I felt compelled to examine this particular point of view in detail, because it is honestly both weird and mathematically nonsensical, but I believe there's an important idea worth discussing embedded in it. Of course, me being me, I'm going to take the long way to get there, so bear with me. But since this is the long way I want to state clearly:

If you're not going to read the post, don't just slam the content creator I reference because you think I'm about to and you want to join in. That's not what I'm about to do, and neither should you.

The gist of the problem is this: the video expresses a ludicrous idea. The idea is if a $30 offer contains four things - let's say T2A, T5B, T5CC, and gold, then the offer should contain at least thirty bucks worth of each item.

What?

I'm not mischaracterizing the video: I've linked it above. Nor is this an isolated incident. This person believes in general, an offer for X dollars should contain X dollars worth of every item in it. I don't think most people believe this, but there are people that do, and I often wonder how many came to that conclusion on their own and how many picked it up from Youtube videos.

Let's take this opportunity to demonstrate how such offers *should* be analyzed, for the benefit of players who may not know and may be misled into thinking the referenced position is simple and reasonable. Let's look at this offer in the way it ought to be analyzed economically. We'll presume the player is the highest progression tier - Paragon - and compare that offer to what a Paragon player could do using the catalyst store. The *correct* thing to do is to try to break down the contents of the offer to see what the components are worth, and simplify the offer analysis to as small a subset as possible, so the need to estimate value qualitatively is minimized. We start by looking at the two things you can buy in the catalyst store as a Paragon player: T2A and T5B. T2A costs 60 units per. T5B costs 120 units for half a catalyst, or 240 units per. So the net cost of six T2A and two T5B is 6 x 60 + 2 x 240 = 840 units. In cash terms, assuming we were to buy units in the most efficient way possible ($100 USD = 3100) we get about $27.10 USD.

The offer costs $29.99 USD, so if we subtract the T2A and T5B from the contents and the relative value from the price we get a net cost of $2.89 USD for a 50% T5CC selector and 300000 gold which is subjectively pretty good value. That's the incremental value being presented to a Paragon player in the offer, assuming they buy units.

However, we need to also consider the case of a player that doesn't buy units in general. For a player with essentially unlimited units, the catalyst store catalysts are practically free. To such a player, the T2A and T5B in the cash offer are of far more limited value. The cash offer is then asking about $30USD for half a selector and 300k gold, plus some catalysts you don't really need. That valuation is far worse.

So if you're buying units, the cash offer seems great. If you're not buying units, the cash offer seems poor. In both cases, this can be analyzed in the same way: by *adding up* the value of the contents and comparing that value to the cost, based on the situation of the player.

What I'm presenting here is probably so obvious to many readers, it barely warrants even mentioning, but for the benefit of those for whom this is not obvious, this is the standard way of judging value economically, or mathematically. This isn't something I've made up or that's a matter of debate. This is just how value is defined. So where does the "every item should be more valuable than the cost" idea come from, if it is so mathematically strange?

I believe it is mathematically strange because it isn't a mathematical idea at all. Rather, I believe it is more of an emotional idea: the idea that when you spend cash, every single thing you get in the package should "wow" you. When you spend $30USD, you should look at the T2A in the offer and go "wow" and when you look at the T5B in the offer you should go "wow" and when you look at the gold you should go "wow." You aren't buying things, you're buying a feeling. That's not an entirely crazy idea. At the end of the day, all any of us is ever buying are experiences, not things. Should cash offers strive to offer the experience of Christmas morning?

I'm guessing that there are some people who think there is some merit to this idea, even if they think the math behind it is broken. So let's set the math aside as simply indulging my need to inflict calculation on the forums and discuss the non-mathematical side of this. What would be the consequence of requiring offers to wow everyone with the totality of their contents?

In my opinion, mostly bad. There are many people who would laugh at the math in the video I reference above but agree in principle with the idea that cash offers should always contain high value. They should, in general, strive to "wow" purchasers. But that's extremely bad for the long term health of the game. There are games in which the vast majority of spending is induced by high value offers. The economics of those games operate similarly to how many people here on the forums try to describe as "Business 101" or "Economics 101." Cash offers should contain value at least as high as the cash itself is worth. There should be incentives to buy more, such as volume discounting. Stuff like that. There are games like that. Almost all of them are in Asia. Practically none are in the US or western countries in general. Why?

Because in Asia, games as a service has culturally revolved around spending in the game as a mirror of spending in real life. Spending is a form of status. There's no stigma around "paying to win." If you paid to win, it is because you made enough money to buy it. Having a top tier account in a video game is like having a Cadillac in the drive way. You earned it, you deserve it. It is a matter of pride to spend, and spend efficiently on the most value possible. Spending doesn't replace skill, spending is the skill.

However, that's culturally unacceptable in general in the US and other western countries. Here, there's a stigma to "paying to win." Here in the US, for example, paying to win is almost seen like being a trust baby. You aren't your account, you're like the parent of your account. You didn't pay to win, you paid for your child to win. And that's different. It is almost seen like cheating: your account didn't win, its parents paid for it to win.

This tension between deserving what you can buy, and wanting gameplay to earn its own victories, is the grey area where F2P monetization in western games lives. We want to believe that a free to play player can succeed. But we all want our personal spending to count. This has to be balanced for a game to succeed. If cash becomes too valuable, if spending becomes too powerful, this dichotomy breaks, and the game breaks with it. Spenders must be allowed to believe their spending matters or they won't spend. Non-spenders must be allowed to believe that not spending doesn't doom them, or they won't play. And most spenders come from the ranks of the non-spenders. Lose them, and you eventually lose everybody.

So no, spending cannot consistently wow spenders. *Sometimes* it has to, to keep spenders engaged. That's why we have Cyber Weekend. Most of the time it can't. That's why we have most of the other days. Offers generally have to have mathematically sane values. There is some subjectivity to that. but in general most offers have to have nominally low value relative to the price, because most offers are designed to see what the minimum value necessary to get someone to spend is. Some have nominally reasonable value. Those offers tend to be those that encourage people to spend regularly, so they need sustained value. And some have blockbuster value, because sometimes spending has to be exciting, to keep spenders engaged. Different offers have different values, because they fundamentally need to address different needs.

But in general, we should not be comparing individual items to the price of the offer in total. In mathematical terms, that's nonsensical. In subjective terms, that's dangerous.

To reiterate. This is about the idea, not the promoter of the idea. The idea is a worthy subject of dissection and criticism. I'm not criticizing the fact that the presenter presented their idea. They have every right to present their honest position. However, when that position fails to hold up, I believe it is fair game to take the position apart. Which I've probably done to a needlessly lengthy degree, but that's what the N stands for: "needlessly lengthy."

If anyone feels the need to personally attack anyone, attack me for wasting your valuable time. Don't attack the content creator I reference. Attack the idea all you want, because (in my opinion) it is wrong. That's where any discussion should begin and end.

Comments

Agent_X_zzz

All it took was one look at who made the video for me to not watch it

unknown

This content has been removed.

Qwerty12345

Math is his issue. He doesn't understand that if you sell 4 things worth ~$15 in a $30 bundle, you are getting about half off... not paying double.

Kerneas

Imo it is also important, that you don't just buy the items, but often also time. Items use to have limited access, so if you can buy them ahead, you pay not only for the items, but also for the edge it gives you over other players. Take the Act 7 completion offer. It costs 10k units. If you explored mEQ on Cav difficulty for months and months, you wouldn't spend nearly as many units. But it'd take months. And the option to have it right now is added value

SummonerNR

(nice write up 😀)

Does this basically stem from the point of view that say someone is really only looking at 1 or 2 items from within a bundle that contains 4 different items (you referenced that a little but really didn’t draw the conclusion from that).
And so doesn’t care about the other 2-3 items within the offer.

Thus, the particular item that they *are* interested in should individually be worth the totality of the bundle price, because the other items are basically worthless to them.

And extrapolating that across a wide range of people who all might be looking at it for a different component that what others might be looking for. Thus *every* individual item must be worthy of the entire cost of the bundle.

If the above were not the case, and indeed someone who does need ALL of the items included, and still expected each individual item to be separately worth the cost of the bundle as a whole. Well, then yes, that is where the Math would go terribly south.

DNA3000

Does this basically stem from the point of view that say someone is really only looking at 1 or 2 items from within a bundle that contains 4 different items (you referenced that a little but really didn’t draw the conclusion from that).
And so doesn’t care about the other 2-3 items within the offer.

Hypothetically speaking that *could* be the case for someone, but I do not believe that is the case in this situation, and I do not feel like that is the idea being expressed.

I also believe that there are times when the developers have similar thoughts. But when they do, the things in the offer tend to be unrelated. If you're buying, say, champion crystal shards and they throw in a combat boost, I think we can all agree the champion boost is relatively unrelated to the champion crystal shards. It is more of a "let's toss this in to sweeten the pot" kind of thing. Those kinds of offers tend to be valued primarily on the core thing, and the value of the other stuff isn't directly factored in, even if sometimes the value of that extra stuff is itself substantial.

But when you're offering catalysts and gold, those are more interrelated things. Everyone might not need everything equally, but you're assuming most people who buy it will use everything in it in some way. In those cases, the developers are more likely to value the offer based on the sum total value of the pieces, and by extension the players should assume that's the value intended to be offered for the price.

Now, sometimes offers can live in weird limbos. For example, we had some recent offers with odd combinations of stuff like T2A and T1A. Because those are more widely separated resources, it is less likely that a player would need both simultaneously. In those cases, I think the case can be made that the net value of the contents isn't the sum of the pieces, but slightly or even significantly less than that.

So the *idea* that sometimes an offer is mostly about one of the pieces and not the sum of all of them is not a crazy idea. Sometimes it is the best way to value an offer. But the circumstances of when that is true are very specific and narrow, and when you're doing it you should explicitly state that you are. In this case, I do not feel that was done.

DNA3000

Imo it is also important, that you don't just buy the items, but often also time. Items use to have limited access, so if you can buy them ahead, you pay not only for the items, but also for the edge it gives you over other players. Take the Act 7 completion offer. It costs 10k units. If you explored mEQ on Cav difficulty for months and months, you wouldn't spend nearly as many units. But it'd take months. And the option to have it right now is added value

Yes, I agree that is an additional benefit inherent in spending on an offer, if we are comparing to the time it takes to earn units (for example). However, it is difficult to put a price on that time in the context of playing a game. Everyone has a different idea of what they need in terms of return on their investment of time. So that is a very qualitative thing that I feel should be usually left to the individual player. The role of someone like me who wants to inform players is to tell them what the intrinsic value of the components are relative to their purchase price, and then leave it up to the buyer to decide if the time savings tips the scales in one direction or another.

Jaded

Do not watch the prof hoff

GroundedWisdom

I agree, 100%. Oftentimes, I see people focusing on one aspect of an Offer and basing a judgment. I don't really question one's decision-making process, and how they draw their conclusions. However, the full value of what's included is most times overlooked.
I also think that another aspect that ties into the "wow" factor is a side effect of some only spending when something is a big sale. While their prerogative, it isn't a statement to what's worth it and what's not. More a statement to what's worth it *to them*.
As for the math, 30+30+30+30 does not equal 30. Agreed on that front as well.

AverageDesi

People be doing exactly what DNA explicitly requested not to do🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I agree this issue is not limited to this creator. I've seen many a comments that day things like " I'm not paying XX dollars for Y amount of A" when the offer includes A,B,C and D all of which are still a necessary resource

BigPoppaCBONE

I got the idea that the valuation was like a spending limiter. Saying, "If an offer isn't approaching 3X - 4X valuation for X, I'm not wowed and I'm not buying" sounds more like an arbitrary threshold to keep from buying things unless the offer is great in your estimation and not an insane misunderstanding of how numbers work.

DNA3000

I got the idea that the valuation was like a spending limiter. Saying, "If an offer isn't approaching 3X - 4X valuation for X, I'm not wowed and I'm not buying" sounds more like an arbitrary threshold to keep from buying things unless the offer is great in your estimation and not an insane misunderstanding of how numbers work.

That’s a reasonable idea in general, but I am reasonably certain that’s not what’s at play here. Again, the core distinction is between looking at the value of the whole and comparing that value to the price, however you choose to make that comparison, and comparing individual items and comparing them to the purchase prince regardless of the value contained in the rest of the items. What you’re suggesting is a perfectly reasonable variation of that: if you’re spending cash, you want three times the value than if you’re spending units, because that’s how you value units and cash in your situation. No problem.

You could argue I am just misinterpreting the contents of a single video, but this is a pattern for the content creator in question. There are plenty of examples where he judges the value of an offer to be extremely good *except* for the gold in the offer which “should be” much higher. In other words, even when every item in the offer is good, all others must still meet some standard relative to price. Not absolutely always, mind you, but often.

But as I said before, I’m using this particular content creator as just a visible example. This idea that a X dollar offer should have X dollars worth of every single thing in it is not exclusive to one person. This is just a public example for discussion purposes. Lots of people have similar ideas, and it would be worth discussing even if I didn’t have a convenient public example to refer to.

It does beg an interesting quandary. If a X dollar offer should have a certain amount of gold to be reasonable, what about offers that don’t contain any gold at all? Are all offers that don’t contain gold defective? Obviously, whatever the “correct” amount of gold should be for a $10 or $20 or $50 offer, zero must be obviously too low. So why would 100000 gold be too little for a $30 offer but zero gold be perfectly fine? If we removed the T2A from the offer, would that reduce the amount of things to be disappointed at? That seems strange from a quantitative value perspective: more is, or at least should be. more.

This relates back to the “wow” theory. Maybe an alternate description would be the consistent value theory. If you buy a $100k car, you don’t expect it to have $30 floor mats. Even if you got that $100k car for $50k, you might still be put off by cheap floor mats. You expect an expensive car to have expensive floor mats, and when it doesn’t you’re disappointed, maybe even suspicious, even if the car itself is a great value. Some people expect $30 of catalysts to come with a certain amount of gold, and if it doesn’t then they are disappointed. But if the gold is not there at all, there’s nothing to look at and be disappointed with. Missing floor mats might be better than cheap floor mats, however illogical that might sound.

Which would reinforce the notion that this is not getting the mathematics wrong, this is psychology overruling logic.

Jaded

People be doing exactly what DNA explicitly requested not to do🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I agree this issue is not limited to this creator. I've seen many a comments that day things like " I'm not paying XX dollars for Y amount of A" when the offer includes A,B,C and D all of which are still a necessary resource

Well it is an open forum and don’t always have to follow the OP’s requests. But seriously don’t watch the hoff

BigPoppaCBONE

Missing floor mats might be better than cheap floor mats, however illogical that might sound.

Which would reinforce the notion that this is not getting the mathematics wrong, this is psychology overruling logic.

Lots of people are inclined to think less of a 4 item deal that offers 3 great items and 1 terrible one. Personally, it makes me annoyed at whoever signed off on that deal and I'm probably less likely to buy it for that reason. Sometimes I push through despite the annoyance and logic prevails and sometimes logic gets slapped up.

Malreck04

I’ve seen people unironically say that hoff gives the best analysis of paid offers lol

TyEdge

There’s a curve here.

This mindset is wrong: the offer should contain $30 worth of each item

This mindset is also wrong: the offer should contain $30 worth of stuff.

So find the middle. And your analysis converting the t5/t2 to units is spot on.

The more things you add to an offer, the more likely it is that a player doesn’t need/want them. When a player doesn’t covet one of the ingredients in this particular stew, you need to have surplus value built in to justify the purchase.

For example, I would consider paying market rate for some t6b or even t5b because my t5/t2a are out of balance. I wouldn’t spend real money on gold because I have a cartoonish amount I’ll never use.

Spurgeon14

All the Prof Hoff hate is annoying, and quite honestly, shameful. If there are YouTubers you don't like, ok, but why do you need to put them down publicly? It's sickening. And then it seems like people just join in because that becomes the trend, to put a specific person down. Like bullies in middle school ganging up to make fun of that one kid. It needs to stop. If you don't want to watch him, don't. Let everyone else decide for themself what they want to do.

Crine60

(nice write up 😀)

Does this basically stem from the point of view that say someone is really only looking at 1 or 2 items from within a bundle that contains 4 different items (you referenced that a little but really didn’t draw the conclusion from that).
And so doesn’t care about the other 2-3 items within the offer.

Thus, the particular item that they *are* interested in should individually be worth the totality of the bundle price, because the other items are basically worthless to them.

And extrapolating that across a wide range of people who all might be looking at it for a different component that what others might be looking for. Thus *every* individual item must be worthy of the entire cost of the bundle.

If the above were not the case, and indeed someone who does need ALL of the items included, and still expected each individual item to be separately worth the cost of the bundle as a whole. Well, then yes, that is where the Math would go terribly south.

I think that when trying to determine value SOLELY for yourself it is not unreasonable to only look at the value of the items you actually want/need since those are basically what you are deciding to spend on or not.

Where that becomes an issue for me is trying to use that process to form an opinion that you put out that is supposed to apply for everyone. As you said, not everyone is looking at multi item offers and wanting/needing the same items so such a valuation is only really useful to your own unique situation.

I didn't even begin reading the original post beyond the 1st paragraph until I watched a little of the embedded video. As soon as it got to the point of saying how each individual item was "costing" the full value of the offer I had to pause it and take a second for a mental double take. This wasn't an issue of the content creator only valuing certain items as was discussed above, it was as DNA said, he was looking at ALL the items and speaking as though they each individually should be judged by the full price which immediately struck me also as a nonsensical mathematical/economical way of looking at offers.

Shiroihara

All the Prof Hoff hate is annoying, and quite honestly, shameful. If there are YouTubers you don't like, ok, but why do you need to put them down publicly? It's sickening. And then it seems like people just join in because that becomes the trend, to put a specific person down. Like bullies in middle school ganging up to make fun of that one kid. It needs to stop. If you don't want to watch him, don't. Let everyone else decide for themself what they want to do.
I understand your point, and I agree there shouldn't be any personal attacks or bullying no matter his opinions. There are of course going to be people jumping on the bandwagon without having seen any of his videos. I disagree with that of course, go and look at his videos for yourself and make up your mind whether he deserves the criticism.

My issue with Prof is that he consistently puts out conspiracy theories and other unhelpful information into the community. You can literally see one in the video DNA posted - where he talks about T4CC being rigged so you always get the one you don't need. This is false. He has an audience that he has a responsibility to ensure gets true information. The guy is a lecturer in Journalism for crying out loud, I'm pretty sure journalists shouldn't just say anything they want that isn't true.

He has a responsibility to do research and make sure what he's saying is accurate, and if you look through any number of his videos these sorts of tinfoil hat theories pepper them - it's not good for the game or the community. And it's not good for his viewers to get riled up and stoked up against Kabam for things that aren't happening. Kabam do plenty of things that are real that you can criticise them for and ask for improvements, you don't need to invent things.

I'm not attacking him in this post whatsoever, merely raising issues I have about his content on a non personal level. I hope he doesn't take it personally (and to his credit he seemed to take DNA's post quite well and maturely in the response video). If he does read this, Prof I hope you consider the effect conspiracy theories have on the community - they're not good.

Not a fan but in fairness, in the videos I’ve watched he makes those comments in jest. Or at least that’s how it took them.
A couple of YouTubers came to mind when you mentioned getting people riled up. There have been moments in the last few years when they have monetised big time by calling up the pitchforks.
Maybe it’s that Hoff does not have their cred as a player and his opinions are viewed differently.
That’s what they are anyway, opinions. It’s his channel and he can talk poop if he wants. Others do too.
As such, it’s a bit much talking about having a civic responsibility. He hasn’t been elected and he doesn’t represent anyone. It is up to each individual to check that information and make up their own minds.

TheBair123

All the Prof Hoff hate is annoying, and quite honestly, shameful. If there are YouTubers you don't like, ok, but why do you need to put them down publicly? It's sickening. And then it seems like people just join in because that becomes the trend, to put a specific person down. Like bullies in middle school ganging up to make fun of that one kid. It needs to stop. If you don't want to watch him, don't. Let everyone else decide for themself what they want to do.
I understand your point, and I agree there shouldn't be any personal attacks or bullying no matter his opinions. There are of course going to be people jumping on the bandwagon without having seen any of his videos. I disagree with that of course, go and look at his videos for yourself and make up your mind whether he deserves the criticism.

My issue with Prof is that he consistently puts out conspiracy theories and other unhelpful information into the community. You can literally see one in the video DNA posted - where he talks about T4CC being rigged so you always get the one you don't need. This is false. He has an audience that he has a responsibility to ensure gets true information. The guy is a lecturer in Journalism for crying out loud, I'm pretty sure journalists shouldn't just say anything they want that isn't true.

He has a responsibility to do research and make sure what he's saying is accurate, and if you look through any number of his videos these sorts of tinfoil hat theories pepper them - it's not good for the game or the community. And it's not good for his viewers to get riled up and stoked up against Kabam for things that aren't happening. Kabam do plenty of things that are real that you can criticise them for and ask for improvements, you don't need to invent things.

I'm not attacking him in this post whatsoever, merely raising issues I have about his content on a non personal level. I hope he doesn't take it personally (and to his credit he seemed to take DNA's post quite well and maturely in the response video). If he does read this, Prof I hope you consider the effect conspiracy theories have on the community - they're not good.
Not a fan but in fairness, in the videos I’ve watched he makes those comments in jest. Or at least that’s how it took them.
A couple of YouTubers came to mind when you mentioned getting people riled up. There have been moments in the last few years when they have monetised big time by calling up the pitchforks.
Maybe it’s that Hoff does not have their cred as a player and his opinions are viewed differently.
That’s what they are anyway, opinions. It’s his channel and he can talk poop if he wants. Others do too.
As such, it’s a bit much talking about having a civic responsibility. He hasn’t been elected and he doesn’t represent anyone. It is up to each individual to check that information and make up their own minds.

i don't think it's too much to ask for someone to not spread misinformation on their channel. you shouldn't have to check the information that someone else is putting out to see if it's facts or if it's a conspiracy based on nothing

Spurgeon14

All the Prof Hoff hate is annoying, and quite honestly, shameful. If there are YouTubers you don't like, ok, but why do you need to put them down publicly? It's sickening. And then it seems like people just join in because that becomes the trend, to put a specific person down. Like bullies in middle school ganging up to make fun of that one kid. It needs to stop. If you don't want to watch him, don't. Let everyone else decide for themself what they want to do.
I understand your point, and I agree there shouldn't be any personal attacks or bullying no matter his opinions. There are of course going to be people jumping on the bandwagon without having seen any of his videos. I disagree with that of course, go and look at his videos for yourself and make up your mind whether he deserves the criticism.

My issue with Prof is that he consistently puts out conspiracy theories and other unhelpful information into the community. You can literally see one in the video DNA posted - where he talks about T4CC being rigged so you always get the one you don't need. This is false. He has an audience that he has a responsibility to ensure gets true information. The guy is a lecturer in Journalism for crying out loud, I'm pretty sure journalists shouldn't just say anything they want that isn't true.

He has a responsibility to do research and make sure what he's saying is accurate, and if you look through any number of his videos these sorts of tinfoil hat theories pepper them - it's not good for the game or the community. And it's not good for his viewers to get riled up and stoked up against Kabam for things that aren't happening. Kabam do plenty of things that are real that you can criticise them for and ask for improvements, you don't need to invent things.

I'm not attacking him in this post whatsoever, merely raising issues I have about his content on a non personal level. I hope he doesn't take it personally (and to his credit he seemed to take DNA's post quite well and maturely in the response video). If he does read this, Prof I hope you consider the effect conspiracy theories have on the community - they're not good.

I don't have any issue with criticism or a post like yours here. I just have seen Prof Hoff get more hate than any other MCOC content creator. That's what I am calling out. Not criticism, but when the line is crossed to bullying, personal attacks, putting him down, etc.

Viper18

All the Prof Hoff hate is annoying, and quite honestly, shameful. If there are YouTubers you don't like, ok, but why do you need to put them down publicly? It's sickening. And then it seems like people just join in because that becomes the trend, to put a specific person down. Like bullies in middle school ganging up to make fun of that one kid. It needs to stop. If you don't want to watch him, don't. Let everyone else decide for themself what they want to do.
I understand your point, and I agree there shouldn't be any personal attacks or bullying no matter his opinions. There are of course going to be people jumping on the bandwagon without having seen any of his videos. I disagree with that of course, go and look at his videos for yourself and make up your mind whether he deserves the criticism.

My issue with Prof is that he consistently puts out conspiracy theories and other unhelpful information into the community. You can literally see one in the video DNA posted - where he talks about T4CC being rigged so you always get the one you don't need. This is false. He has an audience that he has a responsibility to ensure gets true information. The guy is a lecturer in Journalism for crying out loud, I'm pretty sure journalists shouldn't just say anything they want that isn't true.

He has a responsibility to do research and make sure what he's saying is accurate, and if you look through any number of his videos these sorts of tinfoil hat theories pepper them - it's not good for the game or the community. And it's not good for his viewers to get riled up and stoked up against Kabam for things that aren't happening. Kabam do plenty of things that are real that you can criticise them for and ask for improvements, you don't need to invent things.

I'm not attacking him in this post whatsoever, merely raising issues I have about his content on a non personal level. I hope he doesn't take it personally (and to his credit he seemed to take DNA's post quite well and maturely in the response video). If he does read this, Prof I hope you consider the effect conspiracy theories have on the community - they're not good.
I don't have any issue with criticism or a post like yours here. I just have seen Prof Hoff get more hate than any other MCOC content creator. That's what I am calling out. Not criticism, but when the line is crossed to bullying, personal attacks, putting him down, etc.

And then there's Bero Man, who is also getting a lot of hate. Not that he doesn't deserve it.

DNA3000

So I've had a chance to watch Prof Hoff's response to my post, which I think was in general a fair response, and I don't want this to turn into too much of a back and forth but I did want to address a few points for completeness sake, some brought up by Prof Hoff, and some brought up by others.

1. Am I being overcritical or mischaracterizing a single video to generalize a point of view the content creator does not actually seriously have?

I don't believe this is the case. I don't watch literally every PF video, but I have watched many. I have actually watched his videos since his early days, and while I disagree with many, maybe even most of the things he says, that doesn't disqualify him from being someone I watch. I disagree with Brian (ContestChampion) a lot, but I still watch his stuff. So I don't believe I'm overgeneralizing from one video.

More specifically, Prof has often made statements that cannot be construed as anything other than a direct statement of value that is not in jest, and not possible to take out of context. For example, if someone says "that' amount of gold is sad" that's both subjective, and possibly hyperbolic. But when someone says "this amount of gold is insufficient for the price, it should be this instead stating an actual numerical correction eliminates all ambiguity. That's saying this number is too low, this number is the appropriate one. He doesn't say all of that in the video referenced, but when he says "plus thirty bucks of gold - if gold was being priced in 2015" that's echoing more specific things he's said in other videos. More specifically, when he lists the items, he says "... the tier two alpha are still five bucks a piece, the tier five basic are still fifteen bucks a piece..." which is explicitly doing what my post argues against doing: looking at each item separately and comparing to the cost of the offer (ref 1:41 - 2:38).

So no, I do not believe I took a comment made in jest and ran with it.

2. I missed the part where he compares the value of the offer to the daily specials, which justifies the title of the video.

First off, I'm not explicitly taking issue with the title of the video. I'm aware that's a sacrifice to the Almighty Algorithm. I felt that playing off the title with my own was fair game, but I also made sure to state both in my title and in my content that I did *not* believe that Prof Hoff literally can't add. I *first* presented the math for fair value for context, so that I could then discuss why someone might subjectively do what is otherwise mathematically nonsensical. That's me doing me.

The reason why I did not mention or discuss Prof Hoff's comparison between the offer and the daily specials is because I had no issue with that comparison. That's a subjective comparison, and everyone is entitled to such subjective comparisons. I might even agree with him on that score. But the video doesn't separate the two. It first looks at the value of the offer using a comparison that places it in a negative light, and then discusses why the daily specials are of better value. It doesn't state that the daily specials have better value because of a subjective judgment, it strongly implies that the daily specials have better value because obviously the offer in question has poor value. Perhaps I should have dug more deeply into this dichotomy, but the post was plenty long as it was.

Furthermore, when you say, even accounting for click bait, that the "math" in an offer is broken, the assumption I believe most people will make is that there's a problem with the offer itself. If you believe instead that you would rather have five of these instead of one of those, its hard to say that's a "math" problem. I wouldn't consider it an error but it is misleading. However, again, given the need to feed the YT ranking bots, it is somewhat forgivable, which is why I did not really delve deeply here either.

3. I should not have assumed that players are buying Odins in my analysis: most players don't do that.

Here's an area where *I* could improve. I often make assumptions about how common knowledge about analyses like this work actually are. So in this case I skipped a step very often skipped for simplicity, but which I probably should not have skipped here, given the subject matter. So let's fill that gap in now.

I have a bag with four sets of items in it, with a cost. I want to know if the bag has equal or greater value than the cost. If some things have value that is easier to pin down, I can subtract them from the bag, subtract that cost from the price, and end up with a simpler comparison. In mathematical terms, if I want to know if A+B >= C+D, and I happen to know B=D, then I can simply by subtraction and get A+B-B >= C+D-D; A>=C. I've simplified the problem from comparing A+B to C+D, into just comparing A and C. I discuss this in the post.

However, what if it isn't that simple. What if B sometimes equals D, and sometimes doesn't? Then we have to do a more intricate analysis. The most common thing to do is to try to fence in all possibilities. In the specific example, the T5B and T2A *could* be worth a certain amount of units (via the catalyst store) and then by extension a certain amount of cash, via purchasing units via the in-app purchase store. Or, if a player doesn't actually buy units (they grind them, say) then those units could be worth essentially zero cash. You have to consider both possibilities, which I do.

But then, you still have to consider what the conversion rate for units to cash is. There are lots of ways to buy units, and those different purchases cause units to have different cash values. *If* we are comparing the value of stuff to a purchase price, and we are trying to see if the amount of stuff has high enough value to be worth the cash, we should be *conservative* as to how valuable that stuff is. If we are aggressive, we could overvalue that stuff and end up with less true value than the price. How do we value the items conservatively? We do so by assuming that their value is as low as reasonably possible, and that presumes the best possible conversion between cash and units. The more units you can buy with a dollar, the less valuable anything you buy with units becomes. So you presume the most efficient conversion which is Odins. For players who are not buying Odins, the exact same analysis will end up with the T2A and the T5B having *more* value, because those units are essentially worth more cash. If *my* analysis says the stuff is worth it, if it satisfies the >= inequality, so will theirs.

Remember, I don't have to account for the case where the player doesn't buy units at all in this part of the analysis, because I will account for that separately. This assumes the player does buy units. When they buy units, I presume the most efficient method of buying units. Not because everyone does, but because - in this specific instance - that's the "worst case scenario" for the offer. The best case for buyers is the worst case for the sale.

So for completeness sake, this analysis should have specified this in detail. There are two possibilities: player buys units, and player doesn't buy units. When the player doesn't buy units, the intrinsic value of the T2A and T5B devolves to an arbitrarily low value (in this context). When the player does by units, the value of the T2A and T5B depend on the conversion rate between units and cash. The more units you get for your cash, the less value those items have in terms of cash. If you want to state whether the items are worth buying to the average player, you should either assume the worst case scenario for the player (which is the best case scenario for buying units) or you should example all possibilities in detail, or explain why you feel justified in using some other situational assumptions.

I could have also performed the analysis for every progression tier separately, but then no one who started reading the post yesterday would be finished with it yet.

Finally, as I said, I don't want this to turn into an open-ended tit for tat (unless the content creator wants to open some sort of explicit dialog about this, which I'm always open for). They posted a video, I posted an article about the contents of the video, and they responded to that article. All fair, all polite, all completely as it should be. The rest of the static surrounding this, it is what it is. I get some of the disdain for Prof Hoff to some degree as that is everyone's right to stake a position on a content creator, but a lot of it is definitely over board. And conversely, while my policy is not to wade around in Youtube comment sections, because of my particular involvement in this I did peruse them a bit. I will just say this: Prof Hoff has 63k subscribers (as of my writing this). I've seen maybe a dozen negative commenters. Negative towards me, not him. That's miniscule, and completely unrepresentative of sixty three thousand people. They don't even represent the couple thousand people who watched the video. That's just the internet being the internet. I don't really care, and neither should anyone else. In mathematical terms, they round off to zero.

Mauled

The problem that I have with videos that grade offers is that value is by definition subjective - a Ferrari is worth X to Ferrari, but it’s not necessarily worth that to me, however if I want said Ferrari, I’m going to have to pay what the dealer wants.

Supply and demand also factor into this equation, without paying units for offers, there’s a limited amount of resources in this game so you’re going to pay a premium to get access to these bonus resources, whatever they may be, and you’re also paying a premium for your time - I can make 1k units in a week but it’ll take me 2-3 hours/day, how much money is that time worth to me?

Assigning an arbitrary value to various resources - £5 for a T5b, £5 for 1m gold or whatever they may be when you average out the prices of recent offers is fine but ultimately unless you’re getting an offer that is only 1 of these resources, you’re never going to get 100% worth of that perceived value in one offer.

The issue I have with Prof in particular is his obsession with ‘data’ and how he uses it to forward his conspiracies that Kabam can sense what catalysts you want/need and will rig crystals accordingly. This is of course what is scientifically known as ‘hokum’, and is merely that players only pay attention to outliers when it affects them negatively but never when you open a single TB crystal and get 1375 units, or luckily pull 3/4 of the correct T4CC in the same stack. I won’t go into his general gameplay knowledge/advice as to be fair, he never professes to be a high tier player.

DNA3000

The problem that I have with videos that grade offers is that value is by definition subjective - a Ferrari is worth X to Ferrari, but it’s not necessarily worth that to me, however if I want said Ferrari, I’m going to have to pay what the dealer wants.

This is true, which is why you can never say with any sort of certainty that X dollars must contain Y stuff, or that A units must contain B stuff. Everyone values cash and units differently, and for that matter the same is true for the stuff. We can never say in absolute terms what anything is worth.

But that doesn't mean we can't say what things are worth in relative terms. If I have one offer for 5 T2A for $10 and another offer for 10 T2A for $10, the second offer is obviously better. More stuff for the same price. Now, maybe you don't want T2A, maybe you're overflowing with T2A. Such a player might say that both offers are equally worthless to them. However, that is an extreme edge case situation. In general, most reasonable people would say the second offer was better, even if they wouldn't buy it.

Similarly, 5 T2A and 2 T5B for $10 is better than 5T2A for $10. Once again, more is more. But what about 4 T2A for $5 verses 1 T5B for $5. Now what? We can't just say either one has obviously more stuff than the other. In this case, we can't tell people which one to want more of, but we can try to frame the comparison in ways that might make their choice easier. For example, if the player subscribes to the Sigil, they have an opportunity every week to trade 3 T2A for one T5B and/or vice versa. So the Sigil basically allows Sigil subscribers to value three T2A as equal to one T5B: they can trade in either direction. So for them, four T2A is objectively more valuable than one T5B in most situations, because they can trade three T2A for one T5B and have one left over.

Now, if they are overflowing with T2A, and using that trade constantly already, then the four T2A might still be less useful than the one T5B. There's no way to account for all such situations. But that doesn't mean that the value comparison here is completely subjective. Rather, the value comparison makes assumptions that might not be true for everyone, but are probably true for most people that are included in the analysis.

It isn't that there's no way to do this objectively. Rather, we who attempt to present value opinions to players need to make sure we present information that helps the player make their own choices, without trying to make those choices for them. Ultimately, those choices are governed by subjective factors. But assistance can be objective in its nature.