Compared to the explorer pack promotion, this doesnt really compare.
You have such a little chance of getting the good wings and it costs £6 per pack.
Compared to the explorer where it was £1.90 with a costume, key, CE, lift pass and a heat amplifier.
They should try to use the word "freebie" instead of promotion because a promotion makes it seem of better value.
The sonic promo was more worthwhile in terms of costume and the cpstumes worth.
I'm actually somewhat under-whelmed aside from the promotion package. I was under the impression it was a Year of the Dragon Event....so I was somewhat expecting something like what they did for Halloween or Christmas on a smaller scale....like a few Chinese New Year banners up in Haven or random dragon encounters in the clockworks. Instead it's just some new accessories like what they did with the Sonic stuff. So Chinese New Year is on the same level as Sonic the Hedgehog? They should have saved the Hearts Trinkets for Valentines Day and say that's their V-Day Event.
"They should have saved the Hearts Trinkets for Valentines Day and say that's their V-Day Event."
-INTRODUCING!
NEW, "I LOVE YOU" TRINKETS!
GET A 1% CHANCE OF GETTING ONE IN A $15 CRYSTAL ENERGY PACK!
ONLY 1* AND GIVES YOU +10 HEALTH.
GREAT FOR LOCKDOWN!-
Suddenly, Mass loss of T1 Lockdown Players.
"GET A 1% CHANCE OF GETTING ONE IN A $15 CRYSTAL ENERGY PACK!"
What are you talking about, the percentages would be:
50% Heart Trinket
40% Dual Heart
8% Tri-Heart
2% Quad-Heart
1% Penta-Heart
Trinkets non-upgradable, and the CE Package would cost $20 as these promos keep getting more expensive.
COLLECT THEM ALL!
Boswick
These are epic wings.
But yeah they are expensive :P But CE --> CR --> Stockpile wings off AH
@Blitzwingoo
Really? More expensive? Do tell what the Tails tails pack went for. And the two Rose events. Oh, yeah, $10. If anything, it's been pretty consistent.
(Shrug)
I was comparing it to the Stranger Hats, $3.
To be honest, I don't see how this is making OOO much money. I just waited for about 10 minutes checking how they looked, then grabbed the regal wings from the AH for 20Kcr.
Think about it.
If wings are so commonplace to only be worth 20k...
that means a lot of people bought the energy pack, and thus a lot of money for Sega/Three Rings.
You've basically undone your own logic.
Being Chinese myself, I was kinda disappointed. The only promotion item is a dragon wing accessory that's randomly generated upon purchase, even though I only think about buying 20k CE packs and avoid the cheaper ones.
and dragons don't even have wings in Chinese folklore lol
@Dukesky But they weren't :D That was the lowest price I've ever seen, now I think it's a over 100K cr. My point was, you don't have to buy the energy packs to get them easily.
lol. i see A LOOOOOT of dragon wings. in auction house and in haven. Each pair of wings you see is 10 bucks in the pocket of OOO. And then there are probably darn near as many just sitting in inventory hoping to appreciate over time, or by people too lazy to sell.
yeah. they've made 100s of 1000s of dollars. how much of that is profit, who knows. these guys are working hard on the game, putting in a multitude of hours (despite however much its seems to cynics such as me that they are willfully not putting in new gameplay content, lol). Can't fault them for trying to turn a profit. But it certainly appears to be working.
tl;dr
someone paid 10 bucks for ur regal wings, whether or not it was you is immaterial to the bottom line.
Actually, the Explorer pack you paid for all the items you got, and it was on "offer". Now that it's back up to its "original" price it's highly not worth it anymore. Now the Dragon Wings are entirely free with a regular CE package, arguably better than the Explorers. It costs more, but (excluding the EP) you get more.
Now, if this thread was about the fact that the "Year of the Dragon" is just another freebie promo and that it's not even close to the event that we were promised, I'd be with you.
It's nowhere to the level of deal the Explorer Pack was. The Explorer pack was 1000ce, a stranger hat, 1 silver key, 7 day heat amp, and 2 week elevator pass for $3. Just taking the ce & accessory into account, the wings pack is 3.5 times more expensive for one wings. Meaning you would get 3.5 stranger hats for one wings. I say the wings pack would have been more worth it if it was sold for $3 for 1000ce and 1 wings....they may have enticed me and some others to buy anyways....which means more profit.
The "Year of the Dragon" being hyped as an event is kind of a joke as they didn't even hype the explorer pack as an event but was a vastly superior deal. The explorer pack was just kind of tacked on at the end of Winterfest.
And regarding OOO making a profit....something to consider also is this stuff is all virtual property. You think the cost of designing dragon wings and then copying it indefinitely to met demand costs anything compared to any manufactured product? I bet toothpicks cost more to manufacture & distribute. So yeah I think they're making a killing profit wise and giddy there's people who think they're struggling to break-even because it's a F2P game.
1000ce, a stranger hat, 1 silver key, 7 day heat amp, and 2 week elevator pass for $3
A stranger hat is worth 100~200 ce tops lately. Silver Keys are about 500ce worth. Heat amps, not even 200. Ele Pass is the only thing people bought that for. That's not even 2k ce worth and an ele pass, for £2.
That was good, don't get me wrong, but really all you were buyin' was the 2-wekk EP and gettin' 1k ce for free. That's gone now.
Dragon wings is buyin' over 3k ce and gettin' a free acc that people have been lookin' forward to for a few weeks now.
How "good" it is is deterministic purely on how much you want it, but the actual value is neither here nor there. Both deals are buying a package and getting a free thing (or equivelant).
I've already agreed that it was a joke that they hyped this as an event though.
And this is a pretty arbitrary time to go on about F2Ps makin' money, that's always been the case, it's why there are so many F2Ps out there; they're amongst the most profitable games choice out there, if they can get a good playerbase, this pack changes nothing. However I should point out that all they're doin' is encouraging regular sales by selling their standard product with a freeby, wjich is far better than what the majority of F2P games would do, which is selling the Wings for direct cash, without the CE package, so try and remember that overall, SK runs things pretty well.
My last post wasn't directed at you specifically. The profit stuff was mostly at Aemicus for thinking OOO wasn't making any money.
I don't think your valuation of the stranger hats, silver keys, and heat amps are really that fair because you're looking at how much they are now post explorer pack after they had a chance to effect the market. The valuation of the dragon wings is on the first day of it's release, look at how the sonic costumes crashed from vendor 3.2kce to 35k - 80k crowns selling price in the AH. I think those sniped hats are still going for 100,000cr in the AH. Also think what the prices of the stranger hats, silver keys, and heat amps would be if the explorer pack costed 3.5 times more. There would be less available, possibly being worth notably more than they are now.
I'm not going to disagree with you, most people bought the explorer pack for the 2 week elevator pass, everything else was icing on the cake. Sweet sweet icing!
I also see what you're trying to say....."buy OOO's standard CE pack and we'll give you wings for free" marketing. But what I'm trying to illustrate is the "standard" deal is not that great....throwing in some dragon wings doesn't make the pack much better, but of course people want the dragon wings and are most likely only buying it for them. The thing that bugs me even more is they don't even get a choice of the wings they want, and to make things even worse is the wing's drop percentage isn't even equal. So the thing they're really buying the pack for, they may not even get what they want. This last bit makes a deal which I already consider not that great really bad. Imagine if the Explorer pack all you got was the 1000ce and the Elevator Pass....but the Pass was random on how many days you'd get.....from 1 day to 14 days. People would be like WTF?! However the random dragon wings is gotten away with because it's subjective not quantitative.
Anyways....in line with the thread's name "Dragon Wings- not much of a promotion?", the Event was not much...and the actual dragon wings promotion was not much of a promotion. I also don't see how people can take part in the "event" if they're forced to buy the dragon wings to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. Buying whether in real cash, CE, or crowns in the Auction House. Halloween celebrating was free being attached to the runs in the clockworks, Winterfest was free in the haven.....but Year of the Dragon, got to pay for them Dragon Wings no other way to be part of it.
The thing that bugs me even more is they don't even get a choice of the wings they want, and to make things even worse is the wing's drop percentage isn't even equal.
Couldn't agree more with that part. When there's different colours of them (and thusly, suited to certain things) you're either forced to build a new fashion set to use them (which gets expensive if it's over 2*) or trade off your wings for others, the prices of which vary. If it's otherwise irrelevant (like, you get to choose the colours, but the animations/models are slightly different) then it'd be fine to be random, but you can't exactly put dark red wings on a bright yellow suit.
The "unbound" bit doesnae pan it off either, knowing that prices vary enough for you to not be guaranteed a simple trade; you might have to even pay more for something that's "equal chance".
Halloween celebrating was free being attached to the runs in the clockworks, Winterfest was free in the haven
Aye, t'was hyped up as another event of sorts, even if a small one. Just having a purchase freeby isn't bad, but a serious let down after the hype. It'd have been better if they'd simply said nothin' about it.
I guess one good thing to come out of it that the CE price is falling in the market (suits me who has only bought the ele pass that was on special).
Still waiting on packs (or prize wheel, lockboxes) that aren't cosmetic and are actually worth having.
For me the best thing about these kind of promos is that they lower the crown price of CE! ;P
The thing was both Halloween and Winterfest were commercialized holidays and easier to decorate and bank on. I don't know how commercialized Year of the Dragon is but I don't think it's as marketable to invest in. As some people pointed out Chinese dragons don't have wings so I think they were looking to time something to give people a cheap alternative to wings just as they did with tails. I was sort of expecting this even before year of the dragon (but I was thinking they'd probably just have one wing-type and it'd be Rouge, the bat).
I do wonder if they'll try to capitalize on the other commercial holidays, mainly Valentine's day and Easter. People can say Easter is religious but I've seen other MMOs make a non-religious version just calling it a spring celebration and making an excuse for the bunny-themed items, the egg hunts, and the candy. I think these are ultimately part of a mainstream commercial culture that's familiar to a lot of people and that they could replicate and reward us for while feeling like we're participating in our usual celebrations. I'm not saying that Year of the the Dragon is less important but I don't know how many SK users would celebrate it beyond celebrating new year's day.
So open an asian server! Guaranteed more players celebrating CNY!
(Also, we have hongbao-loaded kids)
=D
Wouldn't they have to get rid of the skellies though if they opened in China? Blizzard had to cover the bones and patch up all of their undead content if I recall. They also had to remove their pandas and pandaren. I think Blizzard was eventually like "screw it" and pulled out.
The explorer pack was a once in a lifetime offer to promote their new payment model. Was it a good deal? Yes it was. Will we ever see a deal that good again? Probably not. No one would have complained about how the dragon wings weren't a good deal if OOO never released the explorer pack and yet now people whine that OOO gave them both the amazing deal that is the explorer pack and this dragon wings deal. I swear you guys are the most spoiled game community I have ever seen.
Open in Taiwan then (where I live). It's like China, just 1000x better.
And if they actually did give us Asian servers I'd be glad to spend all my hongbao on them.
You think with the capital Sega could provide they COULD open Asian servers which makes me wonder how much does Sega give to OOO? Right now I think OOO has been far more successful with this game than most of the new stuff Sega is putting out lately.
Please do remember that Three rings and sega work TOGETHER they do not work for each other. They work together. So I'm assuming that the money that sega might be investing in three rings is not a large amount that we may think it is.
Sega didn't buy out three rings or anything like that. Nick confirms that somewhere. Someone please feel free to find it.
I don't know whether you think OOO can't offer Explorer Pack level deals all the time because you think they can't afford to, or whether you actually feel proud to pay more for less. Either way it's absurd because it's all virtual property.
"No one would have complained about how the dragon wings weren't a good deal if OOO never released the explorer pack....I swear you guys are the most spoiled game community I have ever seen."
Nice argument....that's like me saying "Nobody would have complained about SOPA & PIPA if nobody knew about freedom of speech.....I swear you peons are the most spoiled sheep I've ever seen."
@Blitzwingoo
Yes I am saying OOO cannot afford to offer Explorer Pack level deals because it was the best deal there ever was. If they had that deal on all the time there would be no point in any of the other energy packs because the Explorer Pack is the best of the bunch. If you can sell the same product for $10 and have the same number of sales as when you sell it for $5, why would you want to sell it for 5? Virtual Property doesn't mean OOO doesn't need to make money. There are still servers to maintain and staff to pay.
I don't know about you but I find SOPA and PIPA to be bad in general, but I do not think the Dragon Wings are bad. In fact I believe the Dragon Wings are a good deal and helped lower CE prices which everyone loves. Yeah it would be strange if OOO suddenly punished all the players and no one complained but to complain about a gift just because you got a better gift a month earlier? Come on, if that is not spoiled I don't know what is.
You seem to be missing the point.
"If you can sell the same product for $10 and have the same number of sales as when you sell it for $5...."
Why would there be the same number of sales if the price was halved? I would expect the number of sales to be much increased at $5 than it would be at $10. Sure they would not be making as much profit per sale, but the increase of number of sales would probably make up for it as I would expect the number of sales to more than double.
"Virtual Property doesn't mean OOO doesn't need to make money."
I never suggested OOO doesn't need to make money. Virtual Property means they have bigger profit margins as their inventory has relatively no expense.
"....I find SOPA and PIPA to be bad in general, but I do not think the Dragon Wings are bad."
That was not a comparison of SOPA & PIPA to the Dragon Wings, that was to illustrate your bad argument. You were saying if nobody knew OOO could offer such a good deal then nobody would complain about their standard packs. I'm saying that's like saying if somebody didn't know they could be getting a better deal, then they wouldn't complain. Not only is that a bad argument, it's not the point....the point is we do know OOO can offer better, because they did. What, you want us to pretend it never happened? Yeah it was an amazing deal, but the Dragon Wings Pack doesn't even come close.
"...Dragon Wings are a good deal and helped lower CE prices which everyone loves."
Not disagreeing with this, but if the Dragon Wings Pack was a better deal it would have helped lower CE prices even further because more packs would have been sold.
"... to complain about a gift just because you got a better gift a month earlier?"
Offering us the Explorer Pack was a "gift"? Last time I went to the store and bought something on a good sale, I didn't think I was getting a "gift". In fact I don't think you could technically say anything was getting a "gift" if you paid something for it. It's a negotiation, and I want more for my money. But if you called that spoiled, then fine....if you ever get a raise at your job, just remember it's a "gift"....you didn't earn it. And if you ever ask for another one after that, you're spoiled.
"If you can sell the same product for $10 and have the same number of sales as when you sell it for $5...."
Few years ago there was a study on some game and its sales. They put a...I think it was 20~50% price decrease on it for an offer, and the games sales went up by around 350%. That's serious profit.
(The numbers may be inaccurate, it was a long time ago, but the basic premise is there).
There's a reason companies make offers, and it's because sales VASTLY increase when something is on offer. Explorer pack is a fine example. People were buyin' them by the handful when they were £2. Reckon you could probably could on your hands how many have sold since the price went back up.
@DarkBrady
Sales is not the only figure to consider. In your example it would depend on how much the product cost to produce to determine whether a profit was actually made. Say for example 40% of the price of the game is used to manufacture and transport it. If you reduce the price by 50% then you would only make a 10% profit compared to a 60% profit if you did not decrease the price. That means even if you did see a 350% increase in sales, you would still not have made as much profit as if you just kept the price what it was originally. Now this may not apply to virtual products which do not have such costs, but that does not mean that OOO can sell it for pennies.
@Blitzingwoo
Yeah I consider it a gift because unlike a sale, OOO was basically giving free stuff to the people who bought the regular packs, this is on top of giving a discount in the case of the Elevator Passes. Alright so let's say that OOO made a ton of money off of the deal they offered with the Elevator pack, now why is it that they do not offer that that type of deal again even though it made them so much money? Could it be because it did not make them much money at all? Or else they are actually losing money in the long term due to less people buying regular priced CE? All facts right now does not point to OOO having made a really good profit on the Elevator Pass deal. If they did we would be getting more of those kinds of deals, so since instead we get this Dragon Wings promotion, the logical inference one should make is that OOO did not make much money from the Elevator Pass offer. In any case really good deals are supposed to be rare. Is it normal for people to expect prices to be 80% off all year round just because it was that way on Boxing Day? Nope they don't and yet people are somehow expecting that in this game.
Nothing much more to say. I mean sure they are cool but its just one item, and an acessory at that. I mean yes they need money but they could have spruced it up a bit. But yes I loved explorer deal at that time.
That study was discussing the fact that they did indeed make a huge profit. Not as high as the obvious consideration, but when you keep in mind that a heavy portion of product is profit (A snickers bar costs 50p to buy, but 10p to manufacture) then a 350% increase in sales will still be a huge profit. As you say, with virtual goods this is even higher.
I was just commenting that profits on a particular good do tend to go up more often than not when it's on sale; it's a mentality thing from the consumer, to want to get something for less than they could have beforehand.
However, to your main point/discussion with Blitz:
It's "free", but not technically a "gift", seeing as it's not being given to us straight as a gift, but given to us free on the /condition/ that we make a purchase; it comes somewhere between the two, but hardly a "gift" in the traditional sense.
As for their profit margins, I said here that I reckon EPs probably have them in the hole rather than making a large profit, (at least for the short term) which likely explains the recent surplus of offers and, again as you say, is likely why the sheer huge price redux on said offers hasn't been matched since the Explorer Pack; the amount of spendings on the Explorer Pack was probably high enough to net them a fairly huge amount, but since no one will have been buying regular CE packages, they probably didn't make much more, if any at all than a regular offers worth; that pack was a bonus gift to the players and customers, and less for them as I'd understand it. Now they're back to the regular offers that benefit everyone, also keepin' in mind that that was an annual season specific sale, rather than "just a regular sale", so was justified for being more impressive to the consumer.
Although, by this point I'm pretty sure I'm agreeing with you, Nodocchi.
"...but that does not mean that OOO can sell it for pennies."
Yes they can. Once they make back the initial investment costs they can keep selling it for peanuts because it costs nothing to duplicate virtual property forever. Every sale at peanuts is 100% profit. This is the major difference between virtual property and real property, there's no real continuing manufacture/distribution expense once initial expenses is covered.
"Alright so let's say that OOO made a ton of money off of the deal they offered with the Elevator pack, now why is it that they do not offer that that type of deal again even though it made them so much money?"
I assume you're talking about the Explorer Pack instead of the Elevator Pack....because they did probably make a huge profit on the Elevator Pack and the Elevator Pack was offered again....it was made permanent.
The Explorer Pack isn't being offered again right now because OOO wants to make as much money as possible. Nobody would buy their regular packs if the Explorer Pack was available. So OOO has to wait until we get used to the regular price again and start to starve once we spend off our CE "fat" from the Explorer Pack.
"....the logical inference one should make is that OOO did not make much money from the Elevator Pass offer."
Again I assume you're talking about the Explorer Pack. And bahahahaha.....I'm sure the Silver Key & Heat Amp Vendors are filing for bankruptcy right now in Haven because nobody is buying. The only legitimate point I can see to your argument is a decrease in sales of the regular packs from people stocking up on the Explorer Pack. But all OOO has to do is starve off the CE in circulation with Crown & CE sinks. And hey guess what, more CE sinks coming.....Missions! Not only you get to spend CE on the mission, but CE on new Mission Gear! Yeah....OOO is hurting for money, they're not in control of their own Supply >and< Demand because virtual property costs a lot to manufacture/distribute and us greedy consumers have too much CE and not enough things to spend it on. Oh and it's not their fault there's not enough things to spend CE on either......>cough< lack of new content.
"....also keepin' in mind that that was an annual season specific sale, rather than "just a regular sale", so was justified for being more impressive to the consumer.
I agree the Explorer Pack was a Christmas sale, and it was pretty darn sweet. But I do still question whether it put OOO in the hole profit wise or not. In the real world Boxing Day Sales, you have to wonder whether stores are slitting their own wrists selling inventory for such low sales prices. But then again the stuff on sale is clearing old inventory, they're trying to recoup costs on inventory that did not sell to make room for new inventory coming in. So one may question is the sale price below or above making a profit. But even that is fuzzy as a single item the sale price could be below the profit margin.....but when you factor in the rest of the same item that sold for regular price during the non-sale at maximum profit, overall this set of items could be still a net profit.
Now back to the virtual world items. As I mentioned in my other post, virtual items only have to cover their initial expense and then they can be copied and sold infinitely after then with pretty much zero expense and 100% profit. If the virtual item went on sale, then back to regular price they still made a profit. The only thing they may be hurting is their future profit on the item at regular price. However the virtual item will always be there and eventually it will be be bought and the item will never incur any more expense to the supplier. In the Explorer Pack part of the bonus was the Silver Key & Heat Amp. OOO already made a killing on sales of Silver Keys when they were release, enough so I would think their expense to program were cover long long ago. I assume the same with the heat amps, but I don't know for sure as I may have not been around for that. Silver Keys & Heat Amps aren't doing that well sale wise these days, so why not just throw them in for free.....it could increase interest in lock boxes again to increase Silver Key sales afterwards. Whether it did or not doesn't matter.....eventually more Silver Keys will be sold and OOO will get 100% profit.
So I got to question, was OOO in the hole for profits on the Explorer Pack? I don't think so. Arguably the only thing in the Explorer pack that expense wasn't already covered was the Stranger Hats....which is actually just two hats, one in several colors and one with a snipe on it. (It costs pretty much nothing to recolor a virtual hat).
More Indication the "Year of the Dragon" Sale/Event didn't go so well?
Have you seen the recent survey questions?
"Have you heard about the Year of the Dragon dragon wing promotion?"
"If so, do you know how to get the dragon wings accessories?"
Given the number of dragon wings I've seen in haven and in the Auction House, I'm sure OOO made a lot of money off the dragon wings, however the above would indicate to me that they didn't make as much as they expected to.
IMHO, they should have put the dragon wings in a cheaper CE pack. That and they should have had something in Haven everybody could see like Chinese New Year Banners....or hell, if they wanted to be dirt cheap, have some of the NPC Spiral Knights wearing them. That's what they get for making it seem like an event and then not doing anymore than the sonic promotion.
Actually despite the wings being quite rare and popular I have ran into a few instances with people saying, "Cool wings! How did you get those?" Or even others who are like, "Wings? Since when did this happen?"
There are a few people who haven't logged in or checked the updates in a couple days so it may actually be worth asking them about it.
Idk what the deal is with "do you know how to get them?"
From the initial Teaser post a week or two ago Nick refused to tell anyone how to get them, insisting it was a secret. That had it sold in my mind that it was an event and there was some game to play to get them or some such, some other fun method; it seemed pointless to refuse to tell anyone "how to get them" then just sell them in the Depot, seems like deliberate misimplications just to mess with people. I mean, they knew that folk would be gettin' them regardless, but they really should have just left out all the hype, that's the only thing that's ruined it for anyone. Just surprisin' everyone one day and bein' like "BLAMMO! Dragon Wings for sale now" there'd have been bedlam with all the excitement. But create the illusion there's goin' to be some "event" with a secret, fun way of acquirin' them and have it just a regular sale offer creates massive disappointment. Wasted opportunity if you ask me, and the next "event" they have lined up had better not be a repeat of this farce.
I think the explorer pack was just so OOO could see if the elevator passes messed up the eco.