"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.

Boswick
These are epic wings.

But yeah they are expensive :P But CE --> CR --> Stockpile wings off AH

(Shrug)

I was comparing it to the Stranger Hats, $3.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

For me the best thing about these kind of promos is that they lower the crown price of CE! ;P

So open an asian server! Guaranteed more players celebrating CNY!
(Also, we have hongbao-loaded kids)

=D

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.

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.

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."

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.

@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.

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.

"....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).

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.