Announce post #2838: Promotion Reminder

Autoposter

<pre>4/29/2018 at 3:32
Tiur, the Gnosis
Everyone
Promotion Reminder

Hello everyone!

This is a reminder that yes, the promotion is on schedule, so the Wheel will be ending soon, as will the lottery! If you have any intention of playing, time is running out.

No, there will be no last minute Mass Drops of tickets or more skull tokens. They've been kinda fun, and might make a comeback later, but for now they seemed a bit of a flop.

Since we now have forum threads attached to this, please feel free to use this as a discussion of the Wheel promo, Massdrop promo, etc, and I'll share feedback on why we didn't like Massdrop and such.

-T

Penned by my hand on Closday, the 20th of Variach, in the year 473 MA.</pre>

Tiur

Reasons Tiur Hated Massdrops:

1: Sales seemed to tank on anything that might end up a massdrop. Why spend $$ when it could come up for ingame currency?

2: Some deals wouldn't always make it to a good point. I don't like gambling with credits very much.. it's one thing to have some up and down over with a chest that has a solid, calculated average value, but when you could flat out overpay for something because the sale point wasn't met? I don't like that.

3: Not having tradein/retirement value on good deals again makes me feel shifty. As much as I love getting rid of credits, it feels like punishing players for being thrifty.

(Their return might be more involved with gold and IC, instead of credits. I planned too heavily on credits)

Leana

I will always be waiting for my underwear of stability with a free certificate of customization...

Vyxsis

Leana said:

I will always be waiting for my underwear of stability with a free certificate of customization...

something something density defense makes all the girls' panties drop something something?

Evalyne

Tiur said:

Reasons Tiur Hated Massdrops:

1: Sales seemed to tank on anything that might end up a massdrop. Why spend $$ when it could come up for ingame currency?

2: Some deals wouldn't always make it to a good point. I don't like gambling with credits very much.. it's one thing to have some up and down over with a chest that has a solid, calculated average value, but when you could flat out overpay for something because the sale point wasn't met? I don't like that.

3: Not having tradein/retirement value on good deals again makes me feel shifty. As much as I love getting rid of credits, it feels like punishing players for being thrifty.

(Their return might be more involved with gold and IC, instead of credits. I planned too heavily on credits)

I like the idea of the "massdrop" promotion. I don't like the reality of a massdrop promotion. Imperian used to do them quite frequently, and it was always a game of chicken as to buying them.

I'd go for the wheel as a promotional if it wasn't 10 bucks a spin. That's an indie game on Steam per lootbox. I will probably get much more value out of that than the lootbox.

It's been said before but for me this sentiment is especially strong here: "Give me a reason to pop a couple bucks on Aetolia and feel good about it." This would be a good way to do that, I feel.

Oonagh

I will concur with that sentiment, the 10 dollar buyin on skull tokens is rough. That being said I did get a three or four I believe, two of them were chocolates which kinda bummed me out cause the market is inundated with them and they decay so its hard to sell them. One was 30 credits, and another was 50 for 800th spin plus a pipe. I think 40 dollars I still came out ahead, but the chocolates did kinda upset me on the first two I did.

I was hopeful on the massdrops to spend some gold, I had saved some specifically for them.

I was informed you had decided to stop them though so I made use of the gold otherwise, but I wasnt really aware of it until it just kinda stopped.
Either way, I prefer promotions that are easier to buy in on, I feel like years ago the buy in on alot of them was 4.99 and now they are 9.99. Like Evalyne said, thats a game on steam, or like ...dinner.

I know you guys will come up with plans, and learn from things that didnt work and create things that do, so dont let me discourage, I just thought I would be another voice in the crowd to share my opinion! I appreciate the thoughtfulness of what is beneficial and the fact you are human in feeling bad about a promotion being kinda iffy.

EDIT: I dont know why I wrote Leana, I meant Evalyne...I hope this didnt all sound abrasive or anything, I generally love the work being done.

Tiur

I have no idea what Imperian did in the past. Massdrops are entirely new code, so I'm not sure what they were doing before.

Let me throw out a caveat about promo discussions too... I totally get that you might have an economic issue with the balance of credits/promotions, etc. I have no power over that. My job is to make them interesting to players and keep them within a certain range of value, so as not to devalue existing things vs new things, not create a disparity between different games, etc.

If what you mean is that you'd prefer to pay less for a skull token, but get proportionately less.. I think I get that? I might be able to act on that in the future. The sad part is the kinds of prizes that would be available for reduced costs. It's like, giftbags come out to a similar value of $/cr as chests, but people like chests way more because their stuff is cooler... (If however, your point is that you don't like the average value of a $ in Aetolia, again, I'm not your audience, sorry. I'll just kibosh those discussions in favor of things I can actually effect.)

E:

I am perhaps thinking I should kill the swinginess? Maybe in the future I'll bring the value more into a midlane. But of course, if I remove crappy prizes like chocolates, I have to bring down awesome prizes to keep the average sane)

Evalyne

Tiur said:

I have no idea what Imperian did in the past. Massdrops are entirely new code, so I'm not sure what they were doing before.

Let me throw out a caveat about promo discussions too... I totally get that you might have an economic issue with the balance of credits/promotions, etc. I have no power over that. My job is to make them interesting to players and keep them within a certain range of value, so as not to devalue existing things vs new things, not create a disparity between different games, etc.

If what you mean is that you'd prefer to pay less for a skull token, but get proportionately less.. I think I get that? I might be able to act on that in the future. The sad part is the kinds of prizes that would be available for reduced costs. It's like, giftbags come out to a similar value of $/cr as chests, but people like chests way more because their stuff is cooler... (If however, your point is that you don't like the average value of a $ in Aetolia, again, I'm not your audience, sorry. I'll just kibosh those discussions in favor of things I can actually effect.)

E:

I am perhaps thinking I should kill the swinginess? Maybe in the future I'll bring the value more into a midlane. But of course, if I remove crappy prizes like chocolates, I have to bring down awesome prizes to keep the average sane)

To explain the comparison: Imperian had a very similar system that was it's own. It was credit based however. It was basically their answer to player complaints that artifact auctions were not frequent enough, since auctions had to be ran manually and policed rather closely, is my understanding.

Personally and speaking only for myself, I'd be okay with for example, having the current prize table on a reduced cost buyin, and one with less faff, for the current cost. Or something to that effect. I'm fine with the idea of tiers where better off players can pay for a better prize table. I'm fine with being off in the cheapo tables, as long as the cheapo tables exist to begin with. Right now so much of Aetolia isn't economically feasible for me. I want a way to give you guys a fiver and feel good about it but I really don't have that.

postscript: Hell, let me buy another spin on the free table for a small amount of cash, I'd be cool with that, too. It's not like the free table is garbage either (though the paid one is much more desirable ofc)

(edit: in retrospect I'm not sure if I made much sense in the above paragraph, I blame the meds. If you need clarification, please ask!)

To provide an unrelated to gambling example, I liked the previous artifact cart where I could buy chocolates for that reason, because they were directly helpful to me (if consumable, that's fine whatever), and they let me give you guys small amounts of cash as I was able to provide.

Leana

I was hoping for a massdrop I could use or something fun (like an item that wasn't for pvp or pve). I also expected more than just 'More who buy, less it'll cost' and 'If enough buy, get one prize'. There's so much that could have been done but it felt like it died the moment it launched.

The wheel is enough of a promotion for the month and having the massdrop was a nice bonus. I was sad to see it go. There was plenty of room for smaller scale stuff (like 5k gold massdrops for consumable items like pills/hearts/eyes or something new). It could easily holdup to be its own promotion if a few more steps were taken and the schedule of the drops was known.

Aishia

I really liked the massdrop and it probably chonched like 2k+ credits off me

Alathesia

Massdrops were ok, we all know the popular ones were the web boots and the skull tokens. My problem with the massdrops were you offered some great things that I would have totally invested in, BUT you were not able to upgrade. Most of us would like to eventually make it to level three stat bonus artifact. If we were able to upgrade the massdrop to that level two then eventually three I think more people would have jumped on it. I do not care about the retirement value, I am actually ok with it not having that retirement value. It is like buying something cheaper that is second hand, you wont get the warranty with it. Another issue I thought was the amount of people that had to buy the item to get the better discount or prize. There were one or two things I would have gotten had the number gotten high enough, like the artifact pack. It was a great value, but since not enough people bought it, it became actually more than the artifact cart?! (Massdrop was 115 credits if I remember correctly, prize was expansion. Pack is only 100 credits. See the issue if not enough buy it?)

As for the wheel.. I love the wheel promotion, wish you would bring back the IG purchase of skull tokens to the artifact cart. My only issue is that you spin the wheel with a skull token and get a chest. You get all excited oooo a chest.. open it to find a plush token. The market got flooded with plush tokens, I know I am sitting at like three with all the plushes. They had no tradein value and most people will not pay more than three credits for them. That kind of bummed me out. But other than that, I love the wheel. I cannot afford the outrageous prize of skull token with RL money, but will go broke IG if skull tokens were more accessible IG.

Anyway.. just my opinion.

Edited:
I agree with @Leana it would have been nice to see smaller prizes on the massdrop. Maybe unique minipet, or smaller scale prizes for gold. There was plenty room to add different items, and not just cater to those who do PVP and PVE. Maybe even some crafting boons or those portfolios we had a while back.

Galadriel

Well the fact that for the last two weeks of April there were 0 massdrops didn't help. I know I got on every day sometimes just to look at massdrop and saw nothing on regular massdrop or the future list and it felt disappointing. I also agree with @Leana smaller prizes would have helped keep interest going. It really felt like it was more of a 'spend and buy credits' promotion than one designed to attract more players or make it more fun for the people already playing. I was more put off from buying the stat boosting ones mostly only because I already had one half of the special artifact, but thought it was a good way for people without tons of money to get some of the best powers in the game. I also agree with @Alathesia that the non-upgrade-able part of any of those really hurt because I know I want to have the best artifacts... I can't do that without it being upgrade-able... its limiting... and so the sales were limited. As for the wheel, the free spins, 99% of the time you get nothing of real value. The wheel is more of hoping you get something good, but predicting you will get something disappointing and more often than not you are right. The 'rigged' feeling of the wheel is all too real, especially at 8-9 dollars a pop if you buy them from the site, not only that but, you could end up losing value... I would rather go buy regular lottery tickets or play blackjack at a nearby casino... Not because i think i'll win... but because its more rewarding if you win. Who wants to spend that much money on a handful of chocolates? Or a plush token? No one... thats who.

Leana

I just want to say I think the announce forum generator is a great idea and I hope it brings more people to the forums to provide input. I think it'll mostly be negative input so we need to remember to mention the good parts or the Admin will get discouraged too. Each promotion requires work on their part and it may not seem that way to us. Aetolia is a product too, so we need to remember that spending money on it is part of each promotion. Talking about what we enjoyed or would spend money to acquire helps them, I think.

I like the idea of Massdrop a lot, even with all the flaws. If no one bought spider boots, for example, except Vyxsis and I, we would have still come out on top with an 80credit savings. That is with it not even counting towards my retire value (which Leana's value is already broken because of how old she is) and it's one of those artifacts no one should really tradein(even though I traded in my first pair years prior). My only issue is not being able to have it on another item, but that can probably be worked out later. I have dozens of suggestions for Massdrop potential options if input is ever requested. (I've already volunteered a lot without asking, I know)

The chocolate massdrop is what stopped me from buying money spins for the Wheel. The market got flooded and I don't normally use them, so I would feel completely cheated. I liked that you could get minipets (rare ones too), style scrolls and iterators, though I wish there was a change for more than one. If there was no massdrop for Chocolates, and chocolates were less likely to be gained from the wheel, I would have bought paid spins for me and others. I would complain when I didn't win big, but I would be happy with the rest of the prize pool.

Oldbie nostalgia time:
The old wheel was fun because it could benefit you in crazy ways but it could hurt you in crazy ways. You could spin and die instantly, or change gender for a day, or get every possible affliction at once, or level up instantly, or get an artifact! You also had to hunt for it kind of like you hunt for a lesser foci, but let's never bring that back. There was a fun bug that if a Tekal got the level up, they'd instantly make it to like level 150 XD. In all seriousness, people spent hundreds of dollars on lowbies to bypass hunting to endgame with wheel spins.

They used to be $2 a spin and you got one free spin each RL day you logged in and there was only one wheel in Esterport. That brought players together, created conflict, created laughs, and helped socialization. With there being five wheels, everyone is disjointed. With there being no negatives, there is only the expectation of great prizes or crap prizes. I know there were good reasons they removed it across the board(all ires are all good prizes, Achaea being crazily good but their economy is overly inflated which can support that). It may have been a bad idea to get rid of bad prizes. Probably something that a larger pool of input would be needed if Tiur were open to messing with prizes in that way.

It's solid on its own and the average return is about the same or more than cryptic chests/giftbags, so you're never screwed in larger numbers. I strongly suggest all the wheels are removed and only Esterport's remain, with PATH FIND WHEEL leading you there.

Axius

On the topic of negative wheel prizes: I'd like to see these too, but it'd have to point to not having the "insta-kill you" one. That'd be.. uncomfortably bad. But on the other hand, random effects where you get things like the gender-swapped for 24-hours or something? That I could see being..interesting, it'd encourage RP at the very least. And it'd be a little more organic, at least as organic as it happening to the old Bloodborne class (man, I wish I had been around when it was still a thing back when Bloodborne was even still around. Near the end there, the worst that seemed to happen when you borked a ritual was that you shit yourself and had to scrub off your resulting stinkiness). And don't get me wrong, you could have other "negative" but RP-focused prizes. Things like.. "Inverted directions", for an IG-day, your sense of direction is inverted, and other similar fun things, or maybe a "your world is fog" effect, where every room has an additional line, colored solid white, that says, "The room is filled with fog", and everyone has a "shadowy sillouette standing in the fog" appearance when seen within the room. Stuff like that. There's a lot of "negative" consequences that aren't really going to affect those who would be hunters or pvpers beyond maybe a mild inconvenience, but you also could encourage more RP with that. Maybe have an NPC crier that goes, "oh! look! has managed to get from the wheel! come congratulate them!" Though I am spitballing, am tired, and probably half incoherent at this point.


Just don't bring back death. Probably the only negative I, and pretty much a majority of endgame players would say no to. a minimum of 1% lost just because you decided to take a risk? no thanks.

Additional idea: include the negatives mostly on the free level, but do that balancing you were talking about where you would be just a bit more likely to get something like a premium spin for the risk, and all that, or maybe a chance at one of the lower-cost artifact items, like arti vials and stuff. We're talking the stuff that caps out at 50cr at most though.