@Itsmeandersonlol: By buying things for low prices and selling them high? Energy included in the category of "things" of course. If that's what you mean, that takes quite a while to get into, let alone making good profits.

Also, to keep this thread on it's rails, those power mitts look really silly.

Okay, when I saw new promo, I was downright frustrated. "Darn it, Three Rings! Another set of incredibly rare and flashy costumes! *Flips table*"

Then I saw the drop chances. "Meh, okay. *Unflips table*"

@Itsmeandersonlol: Thing is, with merchanting, you have to have crowns and expertise to make crowns. I have neither. I guess I could sit here and wait for OOO to release a different version of the mixer but with the same mechanics that is more easily available to the general populace, but I would be waiting a LONG time.

Flamesthrone, you can get a pretty penny for it. It's amazing in Lockdown.

Also uncovers Recons nicely...

Easy defeat: Spam 3 shots then move in close to the enemy as the bullets come back.

@Cheshireccat:
"I agree and disagree.
I was angry when I missed the first BK event (I was on a hiatus). The *only* piece of shadow bomber gear in the game and it's a limited event item!?! How dare they!"

Difrence between promo items and event items are huge. To get event items nobody have to pay real money, you doesn't have only one chance ever to get this and you can buy it from other player at fairly good price.

If someone will later ask when SK started to dying, I would point at Confection Prize Box Promotion. If Gunner Update will not change this - It is the moment when Pay to Win in this game started because of Three Rings' desperation.

How has SK become P2W when you have 5* lvl 1 items that are downright worst than other guns/swords...

Yeah the gun is unique, is cool and feel fresh, but in no way shape or form does this gun makes Sk P2W. Go kill vana with it and tell me if blitz is faster or not.

SK isn't only about PvP and broken guns in PvP are actually bad in PvE most of the time so... heh... gun kinda suck, polaris does a better job overall and blitz deal more DPS

Useless unique items yet again

"For the small, small price of 2.000.000 crowns! Anyone who isn't a chinese farmer or a happy merchant can't afford that.
Oh, and P2W started much longer ago with OCH."

Eh, mate. Im talking about event items. And OCH was tradeable on Steam.

Ah. Still, you had to farm a stupid lot and praise the RNGod for it to even spawn Black Kats, can't really say the event was that good. Still better than having to buy the cap with real money though.

And OCH was only tradable for people who had Steam DRM. Anyone who had a SK only account couldn't get it without spending money.

@Raggaprince

I would expect quite a few people to care about the "P2Wness" as you put it of an item, actually. Lets say I'm a T2 player and I see that super cool T3 with an amazing 5* weapon, wrecking havoc in the jelly palace like he belongs there.

"OMG HOW DID YOU GET THAT AWESOME THING???", they will ask. One of these sounds really really lame.

A) I fought the tortodrones during an event, and crafted it from their shells. You can get one some day.
B) I paid the developers 20 dollars for it / sat in haven selling stuff for a week for it.
C) I beat this level that we're on now, and then applied the various rarities to craft it up to par.
D) I fought this terrible mission around christmas time, but its just a reskin- you can craft a perfectly fine one from the Hall of Heroes.
E) I paid the developers 20 dollars for it / sat in haven selling stuff for a week for it. But its just a reskin of sudaruska, which you can get..

"So you mean that someday I too can-"

A) Fight the tortodrones to craft cool gear to show off.
B) Waste a massive amount of time or money on a single weapon in some F2P game.
C) Get a gun like that to use against future challenges.
D) Work towards cool and fun looking trophy weapons.
E) Benefit the developers and receive cool looking gear, if it is of my choosing.

@Sweet-Hope
32kCE is more than enough for this gun. It is 10% chance rather than 1%, people are just holding on them now because it is new and hot, and everyone wants it. I highly doubt if it would be anywhere above 600k in 2 weeks.

To be honest, 10% is a fair chance, they could have made it 1% and people would still complain about it while the P2Wers (losers like me) would buy it with real life money.

I P2W because I find time more valuable than money, grinding 7 hours for a Grasping Aura? Hell, a minimum wage job in Australia gives you $140, that is literally 5+ auras. I did feel somewhat accomplished after acquiring it. But still, that is 7 hours. I do not find much fun in grinding missions over and over again. It is a perspective problem.

People should stop debating on these things, if someone wants to throw money at a game, let them be! If someone refuses to pay, so what? As I have said, this gun is unlike that Celestial Shield, it would end up at an affordable price just like the Spiral Soaker.

Oh and for lockdown? People would find good ways to counter this gun, it is just a matter of time. It is not OP, the trajectory is predictable unless you live in a giant lagzone like I do, and in my case I do not play LD constantly.

Tried to buy one mixmaster... merchant asked me for 70k E for a clean mixmaster...

i honestly start to think if people will sell them while the promo is running, because yeah im kinda pessimistic right now but im going to start thinking they would sell those stuff after the promo ends. this what annoys me. i could try the boxes but i know that i would end spending more than 150 USD just to get the single gun, which i dont going to get because right now RGN hates me :C

wished they could just put the gun in supply depot but then i remember that could be unfair for all the players as OOO told me. well time to start saving again Energy

70K is way overpriced, the most you should pay is 10K

About pricing, I was thinking it would be like Spiral Soaker (400-500k), that was the most popular weapon during its promo, was a 10%, but it was a reskin. It was still kind of hard to get though. But since this is a brand new weapon people will want/be willing to pay more so who knows.

@Fehzor

I know that they've gotten special cosmetic items in the past, but I think any time a consumer buys something, he or she should get something valuable in return, each and every time. The items those people purchase (with real money) should be consistently valuable. It shouldn't alternate from promotion to promotion.

So far, I think only two weapons have been made exclusive. And I'm okay with that. There are dozens of FREE alternatives. The vast majority of weapons, items, levels, content is available free of charge (although, I'm not very fond of the Shadow Lair keys).

But I'm willing to bet that if you gave the new weapon to 100 random people, 90-95 of them would consistently fail to defeat a skilled player (who was using the usual LD weapons) in lockdown

That said, I do understand what you mean. A lot of the levels and the enemies in this game have grown stale, and new weapons would certainly provide a fresh angle when tackling them over and over again.

But we just recently got the torto guns, so I feel like OOOs was nice enough to give free players something special before they gave paying customers something special too.

For a year and a half, I played this game with a Leviathan Blade and a Silversix (or Master Blaster), so most weapons seem new to me.

There's just so much variety. It's difficult for me to focus on just one or two new items when I haven't even experienced the majority of the weapons that are available. (The Radiant Crystal drought is partly to blame).

@ Megawatt-King

It's not that I'm defending P2W, it's just that I don't see that being the case here.

95-99% of this game is free.

Imagine if there was a store (in real life) where 95-99% of the items were free. Would we really call it a Pay2Shop store?

Almost everything is free. Almost everything is available to everyone free of charge. Focusing on just one or two items almost seems petty.

I remember a time when EVERYTHING cost money. Entertainment was expensive. Today, not only can you get things for cheap, you can get things for FREE. It's something that still astounds me.

And now we live in a world where you can build a massive gaming collection through Humble Bundles, inexpensive seasonal Steam sales, and hundreds of free-to-play gaming options.

So it's impossible for me to sit here and be ungrateful when OOOs provides a game that's almost completely free.

Think about it: It's almost all free. You don't have to pay anything to play it.

How much more can we ask of them? They need to make money too.

Look, I don't like everything that OOOs does (Shadowsun Set/Shard Bomb switch, Radiant Crystal drought, nerfing enemies, things of that nature), but this I can't complain about.

OOOs isn't a non-profit. Buying boxes isn't a donation. It's a purchase. And people who purchase something should get something valuable in return. And the people that don't shouldn't.

But...OOOs is nice enough to give us almost everything for free anyway. So let's be grateful for what they give us and for free games in general.

I was never a fan of the boxes/lottery system either. I don't like seeing my friends open boxes, only to be disappointed by the contents.

I would rather see OOOs offer a unique weapon for sale in the depot or on steam twice a year to ensure that when people spend money, they actually get the item they want. But even if they sold the weapon directly to people for CE or Steam Cash, it would still be a luxury purchase.

Some people have more disposable income than others, and if they want to spend it on the game, that's their prerogative. I see nothing wrong with it, so long as they're able to control their spending (and I really do hope most people are budgeting properly). But if owning a unique item makes them happy, and they can afford it, then I'm all for it.

I know it might seem like companies take advantage of people when they sell luxury items, but those items are being marketed to a niche group that has the means to purchase them.

Think of the new weapon as a luxury item that you wouldn't ordinarily buy. It's a diamond ring, not food.

Of course, just like in real life, people spend more than they have on things they don't need. I certainly don't need these boxes. I don't need the new weapon. It's not a basic necessity for me. Don't get me wrong, I like to window shop. I like to look at them, and I think they're cool, but I'm not willing to spend real money to get them.

I consider the boxes and depot accessories "luxury items."

I just don't see it as a basic necessity. The game can be played without it.

It's like a power glove, a joy stick peripheral, an auto-fire/turbo controller, etc. Those things offer a different experience, but you can play a game without them.

(Although, there are some NES games that can only be played by purchasing an extra peripheral, but that's a whole different subject).

We all need different things, but that's probably true for a lot of people in the game, especially the long time players that have played through all of the content.

While I think OOOs has the right to sell unique weapons if they want to, they probably made something of a public relations error by releasing a unique weapon BEFORE the Gunner Update.

They would have been wise to have waited and released it AFTER giving us more new weapons than we could handle. That way players would have been distracted and they wouldn't have focused on one new weapon being sold for cash.

But as it stands, people were waiting for new weapons, and OOOs released this one in front of them, so maybe it came across as inconsiderate, especially since the company announced the Gunner Update like a year ago.

So yeah, in a manner of speaking, for those players that have burned through the available content, new content can seem like a necessity when they're waiting for the company to deliver on a promise.

In other words, the complaint that SEGA should "release less promotions and more actual content" is much more valid, now that the mixmaster is out and promotions require both coding and artwork.

On the nose, me boy. *Blows pipe*

>In other words, the complaint that SEGA should "release less promotions and more actual content" is much more valid, now that the mixmaster is out and promotions require both coding and artwork.

There is no evidence to suggest that the mixmaster required coding, how much do we know about how OOO creates their game assets? I would argue that the fact that it shot through walls and did normal instead of elemental damage might suggest that an artist did make the gun through and through. It would be an inefficient system if every gameplay element was dependent on extra coding. Naturally I assume there is some editor program, even if it doesn't ship with the game the devs probably have one.

The complaint that SEGA should "release more actual content" is still valid, I won't argue against that.

There's always the possibility that the code for the Mixmaster was an unused asset that the artist applied to their gun design. It could've existed already, but only on their super secret testing area.

Or the Illuminati could have given them the code.

And now they are presumably attempting to fix the buggy wall hacks, using... more artist code that originated from the super-secret code vault?

The original argument was as follows:

Extra effort from the art team is typically not needed once the art assets are done, as all of the artists must wait for the programmers to catch up to them. Therefore, the promotions don't cost the development team very many resources, as the artists would have excess time any way.

I was under the assumption that this was after we accounted for any artist + programmer hybrids switching over. If all of the artists can code things as well as produce art then the argument holds no weight at all, up until the point where the team has far too many programmers, which has also been stated as being not the case. Only so much of this can be chalked up to my not understanding how a development team works, and apparently that includes all of it and anything I can possibly say.

Morever, this whole debunkle ignores the fact that this is SEGA we're talking about rather than some small indie company, as well as the bit where we shouldn't have to understand every facet of the gaming industry to say "you know, I really don't like how this company is behaving with its product." That is our power as the consumer, especially when we have legitimate games to compare our system to- namely, Team Fortress 2 and its crate system that costs half as much as ours does with better results.