Showing Posts For Evilized.6430:
considering they probably pretty easily recouped the production costs from the gem costume sales alone i doubt there will be any quality / quantity dropoff for future holiday events.
any business, when dealing with massive amounts of people like a-net is knows that no matter what they do a portion of their playerbase will not be happy. these people are seen as acceptable losses. would you want people who do nothing but complain sticking around? i couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, myself. 2,000 people quit out of 2 million? so what, there is no sub fee. the big spenders will stick around and still support the game. a-net got the box sales from the people who quit and honestly won’t miss the maybe $10 a month they might have gotten from them had they stayed. essentially this just means that come next holiday there will be XXXX less complaints to deal with.
and this “controversy” is caused by what? the fact that a very vocal minority can’t seem to understand that they aren’t the center of the universe. i can tell you right now that their “best paying customers” aren’t on these forums complaining about losing a measly $50 gambling for some skins.
Just food for thought:
Asides the manhours involved in making the item model and adding it to the game (not a great deal), the item costs nothing.
Supply is essentially infinite. Therefore any price or rarity assigned to it is completely arbitrary. Surely it’s better to sell them to everyone for a reasonably small amount, than to sell it to a tiny portion of the population for a large amount?
I’d be interested in seeing the maths behind this sales model.
*Besides.
the production cost for the items is in the thousands of dollars, small change compared to what they could potentially make from their sale. there are two costume items in the gem shop that sell for straight gems, no gambling involved, these recoup the cost of production. there are a number of weapon skins that drop straight from chests, these chests also give out other items varying in usefulness; they have always been a gamble. there are recipes to craft essentially “mini legendaries,” the materials required are extensive but the skins are currently very rare (the rarity of the crafted item skins will be reduced over time as more people get the recipes and stockpile more crafting mats that arent needed for stat upgrade items).
could they have made a lot of money by offering everything for sale via gems? yes, indeed they could have. they in fact did make quite a bit of money on the costume items. a-net has the items from this event broken down into categories. common (gems) rare (craftable skins) and ultra rare prestige skins (straight drop from chest). everybody has a chance to get something from this event, it just depends on the approach you want to take. do you want a guaranteed item? buy a town only costume for gems. do you want a guaranteed item and dont mind spending a lot of in-game resources to get it? craft one of the skins from a holiday recipe. do you want one of the exclusive super rare skins that can only be acquired through luck? gamble with in-game currency or real life money but there is no guarantee.
then there is the final route, buying things from the trade broker for gold from other players. pick your poison and stop complaining because if you want a holiday item there are more than enough ways to get one.
you paid 50 bucks knowing it was a gamble. you lost and now instead of being able to accept it you blame others. great logic.
a-net needs to make money. people are willing to gamble knowing full well they will probably see no return. i spent money and lost. i’m not complaining because i knew and accepted the risks before i made the purchase. take some responsibility for your own actions people, please.
a-net: hey guys it’s a holiday, here’s a chance at some cool looking skins!
playerbase: sweet, we are all getting skins!
an hour after event starts…
playerbase: HEY WHY DON’T I HAVE EVERYTHING? I PAID 10 WHOLE DOLLARS
that night…
a-net: hey guys we want to give you a little something extra, we stayed late working on it because we felt a little sorry for you guys having bad luck. here’s a second chance at some of the really cool holiday skins, for free!
playerbase: yay we are finally going to get every skin!
a few hours later…
playerbase: HEY YOU TRICKED US, WE ONLY GOT ONE SKIN AND SOME CRAFTING MATS THAT SELL FOR GOLD ON THE AH!
is it just me or has entitlement syndrome gotten exponentially worse over the last few years? i can only imagine what the forums would look like if this game had something like EQ’s epic weapon quests or l2’s enchanting system…. :|