The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: Promotions

Mykellah

@Tiur Personally I find the fragment things kind of tiresome. I get the feeling they're dictated from On High since Imperian also had them, but they feel cheap and they turn me off wanting to buy. I'm more than willing to splash a ridiculous amount of money on something in this game or others I want - god knows at 625 a pop the house mobs I want to have in my house will come at a dear cost, but the important thing here in regards to fragments is that the perception of value to me is extremely low. My chances of assembling a artifact/relic/whatever I actually want are so low as to not be worth the purchase to me. Moreover, they involve an investment of effort (collecting them, cataloguing them, seeking out the additional fragments I need by barter or purchase, etc), that I'm frankly not willing to put into what come down to extremely situationally-useful items. I can justify buying the house and the attached mobs/furniture because they all serve a practical purpose to me of use irrespective of class and alignment, and that's why before artifacts they are my first big purchases on returning. They have the most stable and constant value. Fragments are on the entire other end of that spectrum entirely for me.

I prefer promotions with small but immediately useful things. Easily my favourite promotion IRE ever ran was the costume promo Elokia ran on Imperian, which was both very thematic and gave you some pretty solid but not unbalancing immediate benefits in most cases. MMoreover they were redeemed at choice from a token so the random element was quashed entirely, further enhancing the value. You always got exactly what you wanted. They were on the expensive side, but well worth it. Different mud and different dynamics so take that with a grain of salt, but that stands to memory as without question the promo that most made me want to buy lots of lovely credits even when my character didn't have anything I needed I could afford, which one should think is ultimately what you're trying to induce.

Rhyot

That's kind of the point of the promotions. They change every month so things don't get stale. If you knew every February it was going to be a 15%, eventually you'd get bored of that and be like "Give me something new!"

Mykellah

Rhyot said:

That's kind of the point of the promotions. They change every month so things don't get stale. If you knew every February it was going to be a 15%, eventually you'd get bored of that and be like "Give me something new!"

IRE's done the fragments thing at least eight times. I don't really care that the fragments change what they're of, except insofar as Imperian's last ones were fragments of things that previously you could get whole, which frankly just seemed like it was insulting my intelligence.

Tiur

I do appreciate the opinions, and I'll take them to the next IRE meeting. I can guarantee that the next promo is not a loot box.

Kasimir

Allant said:

Anyone else growing tired of the promotion being a different kind of loot box every month?

I like the loot boxes typically. They tend to be worth it.

I don't like the featured item of this promotion. Too many zones to collect, most zones aren't useful.

Lim

What would you like instead? 

Fezzix

The Diminishing Artifact Discount promo was incredible.

Runas

The Talisman was a bit much just because there are so many areas and the amount of investment for it to be useful would be...my months rent.
I like where maybe the reward pool is not as fast but there is a chance or gamble at something useful.
I really dont find alot of the environments important, in fact, many of them really arent. and the level one rewards for each environment
I mean...I really dont need meditate and sleep bonuses for alot of environments, in fact I dont need those bonuses anywhere.

Mykellah

Runas said:

I mean...I really dont need meditate and sleep bonuses for alot of environments, in fact I dont need those bonuses anywhere.

There's a fair few things that have been like this - they might help a completely new character but they're not of much use to anyone in the 80+ band let alone endgame.

Kasimir

Lim said:

What would you like instead? 

Group the possible zones into pools of relic pieces. My suggestion.

I like that this promo let people go after old relics. I like that you don't have to invest money if you chase crowbars. I just don't like the featured item.

Alevi

I thought the crates were pretty cool until I realized I had to buy the crates and the crowbars to open them.

Tiur

The crates still drop from mobs!

Mykellah

Tiur said:

The crates still drop from mobs!

Yeah Ive gotten like five just casually bashing in Three Rock; I imagine more hardcore bashers have been getting quite a few more.

Allant

Tiur said:

I do appreciate the opinions, and I'll take them to the next IRE meeting. I can guarantee that the next promo is not a loot box.

I don't know how to say this without sounding ungrateful, as I really do Approve of promotions free to play players have access to. However, isn't the wheel of fate just a loot box without an actual box? I say this even though the wheel is my favorite form of this promotion.

To actually provide constructive criticism I think a fair style event would be fun with say 3 or so games you can play that rotate every day until you win and when you do win a game you get like 2 lessons. Additionally could have mini pets/relics for sale for gold/credits and an auctioneer that would start at a random time. Although the time and object may or may not be provided on a sign or a yell the previous day maybe he would have one premium item for auction and the rest would be minor things like the decaying buff candies and stuff.

Allant

Additionally, if there is a grand scale event going on then that makes a great deal of sense to run something easy like a wheel promotion.

Tiur

Okay... I admit when I'm wrong. I guess technically the wheel could be considered a loot box? Also, I didn't make much impact on the meeting, sorry. And the Big Guys had a fair response, which I can summarize:

The Loot Boxes sell. Wheel is usually a good sale, chests are beloved, etc. Arti cart and flat out credit sales are something like half the effectiveness of the others. With the exception of giftbags. I understand no one likes those.

Please don't go boycotting sales, though x_x. One part of the problem is that Achaea is the Elephant of the sales world, so what they enjoy tends to overwhelm us. I am totally open to ideas to modify things to fit Aetolia more. They still haven't stolen my racetrack stuff, for instance.

Mykellah

The Wheel is a gambler trap. But it offers nothing to people not interested in gambling. @Tiur if I might suggest, something worth considering is if lootboxes and the wheel are here to stay (... they are) it might be worth seeing if you can additionally run something else for those not interested in them. This is what Jeremy's done a few times on imperian (yeah, I know I make a lot of Imperian comparisons, its where Id been for the past ... many years.)

Alevi

I love cosmetic items like flairs though. Anything that lets me more emphasize a character's theme I'm all for.

Tiur

But I do run things for everyone Every day you can spin the wheel after 60 minutes logged. And racetrack tickets for hunting.

Axius

@Tiur I love the wheel spin promotions that come with free and premium spins, but I can I just say? My biggest gripe with the premium spins is the fact that the price is just.. well. Lemme point out how it works out. 5 tokens for 45 dollars. Roughly. At the -base line- lowest cost package. This is expensive for me to drop in one go. I'm not exactly a whale like probably a majority of your targetted demographic. But I do want to say, In previous promotions, MKO coming to mind primarily as one such thing. My spending habits tend to be small purchases that add up over time.

I once remember being alarmed that I spent 200 dollars in one month (back when I was still on the "do work around the house, earn 10 or 20 dollars per job" lifestyle of a teenager that had a lot of tasks he deemed "reasonably easy and worth the work") even though I'd only been buying 10 dollar purchases from the website. At the current token prices? That's easily doable. 1 spin for 10 dollars. It'd make it accessible and allow even us people who might not exactly have 45-200 dollars to drop in one large chunk to participate in the premium stuff, and potentially end up SPENDING those amounts over the long term rather than the short term. The promotions that let me participate at 5 to 10 dollars a pop? Those are the ones I know I end up participating in frequently, and often spending a hundred dollars or more on those, just because it's "Oh. I've got the money right now. Let's do that."


Edit: YAAAAAAS! Thank you!

Mordion

what's next? Curiousness.

Ioai

I've bought probably 10 - 15 spins. Best I got were artifact pipes. Yeah...

Tiur

50cr artifact isn't bad!

Stay tuned! I'm reworking a lot in response to the criticism, hence the delayed refresh.

Odds won't be changed overall out of fairness to those that have gone before, but the visibility and prizes are getting tweaked.

Toz

What about the consistent price creep of these promos?

Zaila

I don't see why there shouldn't be price creep in general. 5$ in 2006 got a business further than 5$ in 2018. Even without a brick and mortar to pay for, there are still all sorts of taxes and fees and business costs that increase over the years. And since IRE does nothing for advertising, they can't recover that with increased customers, so they need to charge more to continue to profit or increase profit.

Is the level of price creep that's happened reasonable? Dunno! Haven't seen IRE's financials

Tiur

I'm not really informed about the increase in cost over the years. I haven't changed any prices in my time, at least.

Toz

Zaila said:

I don't see why there shouldn't be price creep in general. 5$ in 2006 got a business further than 5$ in 2018. Even without a brick and mortar to pay for, there are still all sorts of taxes and fees and business costs that increase over the years. And since IRE does nothing for advertising, they can't recover that with increased customers, so they need to charge more to continue to profit or increase profit.

Is the level of price creep that's happened reasonable? Dunno! Haven't seen IRE's financials

They've at least doubled the price of promos entry for wheel spins, idk payout numbers...but credit price hasn't increased. They've said themselves servers are cheap, though. I had one for 15/year last year that could have hosted a MUD plenty fine- dropping $10 for a chance at arti pipes is pretty not worth it though, whereas the $5 was...sort of ok at least. Especially if wheel spins are 30% boosted - I got a skull token ($10) from a free spin and got 30cr ($10ish with membership bonus).

I'm not blaming the admin here since when it was up to them our wheel was so good other IRE games complained and got it nerfed, but Iron Realms (who dictates all this I assume?) sure does seem more wallet-sucking than usual.

Toz

Dusting this back off again- can chocolates have a tradein value? They decay, and I absolutely can't sell mine right now because everyone is drowning in them since they're stocking stuffers. Or do they not count towards the 'value' of the stocking?

Kalinaar

Toz said:

Dusting this back off again- can chocolates have a tradein value? They decay, and I absolutely can't sell mine right now because everyone is drowning in them since they're stocking stuffers. Or do they not count towards the 'value' of the stocking?

This would be great. I had the awesome luck of basically getting just a whole mess of chocolates, other consumables that I really didn't want and not much else. If your best option is selling them dirt cheap before they decay then it makes promotions such as the last one not seem worth the cost at all... not even close. At least a tradein option would lessen the sting a bit. 

Kalinaar

I wasn't around for the veil and custom shield tattoos but I would really like to see a promotion that brings those back.