111 replies to this topic

[Dalthalion]

The Bohunk, on 06 April 2012 - 15:06, said:

Most of my time in the Store is basically just to see what kinds of $$ amounts they are attaching to things.
I wonder if sales would increase if they did a little price slashing?

Probably not. I think most people who don't use it don't use it strictly on principle. That's why it's essentially going to run dry sooner than later - unless they can come up with more Barter Wallet-esque rackets. Not many people have the patience to play for free...

Has anyone else noticed that they can't seem to deviate from a 20% discount nowadays?

[The Bohunk]

Dalthalion, on 06 April 2012 - 16:52, said:

Has anyone else noticed that they can't seem to deviate from a 20% discount nowadays?

They had a 30% off last week on your entire cart. I think there was a max# of items, though.

[Dalthalion]

Right, but that 30% discount didn't affect the things that people really want to spend banked TP for.  What the 30% discount was able to give additional savings on at the time was relic packs and crafting items.  The store-only steeds that were advertised at the time would only get 30% off.

Personally, I'm waiting for RoI to go to 50%+ off before buying it.  Otherwise, it won't be a good deal for me.

[Wayshuba]

cossieuk, on 06 April 2012 - 15:58, said:

When did they admit that?

TW reports on freemium model transaction expections.

[Darmokk]

Interesting graph.



The interesting part is that the weekend peaks get constantly lower but the mid-week drop gets higher.

[Dalthalion]

The peaks and valleys appear to be getting broader.

[Jackalope]

Yes, BUT, people said what would happen after f2p, and they are being proven right, time and again. No one can tell the future with 100 percent accuracy, but it would seem that in some cases, the activity is in lockstep with predictions. Right now it would seem that Turbine has decided that the drug pusher model is working best for them. Who cares about long term when you can flip customers constantly in the short term.

[Amrundir]

Dalthalion, on 11 April 2012 - 23:00, said:

The peaks and valleys appear to be getting broader.

It's the Easter weekend.

[Dalthalion]

I'm not talking about taller/shorter.  I'm just saying that the numbers appear to be condensing near the peaks and valleys, being more horizontal.  At least, that's what I see.  What such a thing says to me is that the overall number of log-ins is in something of a standstill threatening to decline, and the lag problems and lost connection problems are taking a bit of a toll.

[Jackalope]

That may be why they introduced all this 'free' stuff for account length, to get people to log back in and boost those metrics.

[Ardraug]

Would have been nice to fix the lag BEFORE putting "being VIP" as a condition to get the rewards.  Basically I get zilch unless I bet $15 on 6.1 fixing the issue.  Literally bet.

[Jackalope]

I never looked at it like that. Though I do agree that it's about time they started making VIP look like something worth having. As it stands now, there is no reason for people to pay a sub fee at all, you get a better return buying points.

[Haimostigar]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, it looks like VIP or Premium... they don't seem to make a distinction for the rewards.

[Jackalope]

If it's just VIP or Premium, any F2P accounts that never paid even ONE months sub won't get diddly.

[Iorionael]

Jackalope, on 15 April 2012 - 07:28, said:

If it's just VIP or Premium, any F2P accounts that never paid even ONE months sub won't get diddly.

Imho that is acceptable, VIPs and Lifers basically bankrolled the game for years and it wouldn't exist today without them...

[Darmokk]

Interesting that the festival doesn't make much of a blib. Maybe it stabilized things.

I mean the rewards are really lame (horrible cosmetics) but can that be it?

[kitkat]

Since someone mentioned Cryptic...one of the problems they have is their laziness when it comes to moderating what happens in their games (CO specifically). Whether that's due to lack of staff or some other reason is yet to be discovered.

Instead of using GM's to make decisions on player behaviour they've started relying on an incredibly stupid system of allowing players to hand out chat bans. Get enough people ignore you (and it seems to be a ridiculously low limit which is cumulative over an infinite time period as far as we can tell) and you're banned from chat. While, on the face of it, that may not sound like a bad thing, because of the low limit it has resulted in the inevitable group of scammers using it to mute anybody they've recently scammed or anybody they just decide they don't like.

Rumour has it that a supergroup (guild) of like minded idiots has been set up for just that purpose. It's been discussed on their forums for ages but Cryptic have become completely silent on the matter, seems they just don't care. Problem, of course, is that Cryptic rely on people ingame helping each other on chat because there's precious little official information about anything. With a lot of the decent people being driven away from chat, things may well go downhill fast...

The game is also chock full of silly bugs, some of which have been around since launch and the list grows with every update. It seems that Cryptic either can't fix the bugs or just can't be bothered. They are also, like Turbine, starting to get a bit slap-happy with their in-game store.

To be honest, the ony reason I'm still playing the game is that I bought a lifetime sub when things were looking promising so it's not costing me anything now. I got my money's worth. Bit like the situation with LOTRO really, except I just stopped playing LOTRO when I got bored. And of course, GW2 hasn't been released yet... based on what I've seen in the beta, when it finally appears, I'll probably just turn my back on Cryptics and Turbines offerings for good.

[Laurinaohtar]

Seems Steam did them a lot of good then, I suspect though because of the ease of downloading over Steam these are just curious F2Pers who will be gone in a few weeks.

[Trinsec]

But there'll also be curious F2Pers who are like 'oh, cool', and continue playing.

[Laurinaohtar]

Yes, it will be interesting to come back to this graph in a few weeks time and see what effect its had.