ATO sales

[Monty Haull]

On 2/2/2021 at 3:31 PM, Sakai said:

Did not know you could do that ty. 

Another tip.  Only grab one exp at a time from your mail.  Use it, then grab another.  If you grab more than two and use one, you have to wait like 10 minutes to use the second one.

[Andreah]

55 minutes ago, Rugor said:

Another tip.  Only grab one exp at a time from your mail.  Use it, then grab another.  If you grab more than two and use one, you have to wait like 10 minutes to use the second one.

Also, IIRC you can only have two patrol experience boosters' worth of patrol XP at a time, so don't use more than two until you see the patrol XP burn down a ways.

[Ukase]

On 2/2/2021 at 2:34 PM, BurtHutt said:

Cuz this is a GAME. It's not real life. I don't farm and just try and play the game. However, I want to make more high end builds and have made some uber builds but that costs a ton. I blame most of that on high priced enhancements. So, I put my enhancements on market for less than half of the recent averages. The casual player who just plays content cannot make the uber builds if they have altitis - yes, I have altitis...le sigh...

 

I really don't get the greed in this game. Don't you get enough of that in the real world? I see threads where players have so much INF that they want new ways to spend it. I once suggested giving it away to friends and SG/VG mates etc - that suggestion was pretty much ignored. 

 

Ah well, to each their own.  🙂

I agree, to each their own. But let me share a few anecdotes about giving influence away. 

Friend: Yeah, would love to find time to do some more hami raids. I need another winter set to finish this build. 
Me: I can help you with that. What winter set you need? 
Friend: The Avalanche set..they're so expensive! 
Me: I got you, check your email. 
Friend: What?! Thanks! You didn't have to do that! 
Me: Small thing to a giant, lol. 

So...a few days go by...he stops logging in. Been over a year now, he comes back in for issue 27. I ask him what happened, he tells me that he didn't have any more reason to play. Once I set him up with the winter set, he lost his motivation to play. He no longer needed merits. He no longer needed influence. He'd "finished" in his mind. 
Now, sure, people are different. They stop playing for any number of reasons that may or may not have anything to do with getting a pile of inf or some expensive sets. 

I can count on two hands in game friends who I've given 100M to 1B to that have stopped playing since I gave them influence. Yet, I can only think of two players I've given inf to that have continued to play, and one of them paid me back after 4 months. 

I've thought about giving away my influence to various SG mates, etc - but I don't want to take away the reason for them to play. Sure, I can hear it now, "I won't quit, give me a billion or two!". But, I don't know that with any certainty, particularly if I don't know you now. 

The idea of crafting things to sell them at a loss to reduce the cost for newer players, I get it. The SG I belong to has a base FILLED with Purples, ATOs, Winter-Os, and various pricy IOs. A few pick them out, replace them with various goods when they can. Some folks just dump dozens of purples because they have them. But most of the SG never touch them. I ask 'em, they tell me they'd feel funny taking things from the SG bin. I get it. Nobody wants to be seen as a leech. Your way let's them feel like they might have finally caught a break. 

The thing is - you have no idea who's getting the break. I can almost guarantee you that it's not the newer/poor player that's getting your bargain, but an "ebil marketer". You're subsidizing and enabling the very greed you're against. 
True - there might be one to two players out of every 50 or so items you put up that go where you'd like them. But if you've read through this section of the forums, there are dozen of players with low-ball bids on the goods you're selling. So, by all means, carry on! Just maybe think about it - I know it would take more time, but maybe if you sold the items for what most people seem to be willing to sell them for - you could help your friends/sg mates, etc even MORE. 

I also grasp that if players like you don't sell cheap, the prices may creep upward. So - maybe I'm wrong. Certainly possible. Just thought I'd share a different perspective. 

 

[Grindingsucks]

@Ukase  You make some good arguments and you could very well be right about them.  It's almost certain that greedy marketers would take advantage of generous players.

 

Here's what I wish we would do:  Set up the regular play servers like the Beta server for a month or two and make all enhancements available for free.  Make it known that this is a temporary test to see how it affects game play and player retention.

 

If the player base drops off, reset to normal, with the future goal of fixing the market bugs.  If it remains largely the same, and the player base remains and everyone is having a good time, then just have done with the buggy-ass player market and good riddance.

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

Here's what I wish we would do:  Set up the regular play servers like the Beta server for a month or two and make all enhancements available for free.  Make it known that this is a temporary test to see how it affects game play and player retention.

 

If the player base drops off, reset to normal, with the future goal of fixing the market bugs.  If it remains largely the same, and the player base remains and everyone is having a good time, then just have done with the buggy-ass player market and good riddance.

Interesting. It's like that on the test server, and it remains largely empty. Granted, they may wipe characters from there on a whim, but if you get insta-50 and everything's free...only the badgers would be overly concerned, right? 
I'd be curious how that would play out, but my suspicions are that 90% of the folks would quit after a week or two because there'd be fewer carrots to chase. But, again, I could certainly be wrong. 

[Grindingsucks]

The reason I don't play on the test server is precisely the reason you inferred:  Character wipes.  I don't want to have to rebuild my character from scratch.  Free enhancements or not, it's a pain in the ass.

 

Your suspicions may be correct, but how does one know unless one tests the waters?  A priori assumptions and anecdotes don't prove anything.  Experiential evidence does.

[nihilii]

13 hours ago, Grindingsucks said:

Your suspicions may be correct, but how does one know unless one tests the waters?  A priori assumptions and anecdotes don't prove anything.  Experiential evidence does.

We can draw from the ample wealth of data we have from other games in the same genre (RPGs), where the staple is character progression and once that character progression stalls, interest wanes.

 

Heck, you can even work backwards and look at the number of NON-RPG games who have added RPG elements over the years to improve player retention. Nowadays you level up in Call of Duty.

It would take an assumption there is something particularly special about CoH to make its playerbase react differently to incentives. As much as I love the game and think it *is* special, I'm not seeing it.

For someone determined to dislike the market, it's also possible to move the goalposts endlessly with experiments. I'd argue the goalposts have already been moved significantly compared to Live, here you can build a fully purpled out character with merits and veteran levels. Whereas the market was a necessary step for realistic timeframes on Live, it became truly optional on Homecoming.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:51 AM, Ukase said:

The thing is - you have no idea who's getting the break. I can almost guarantee you that it's not the newer/poor player that's getting your bargain, but an "ebil marketer". You're subsidizing and enabling the very greed you're against. 
True - there might be one to two players out of every 50 or so items you put up that go where you'd like them. But if you've read through this section of the forums, there are dozen of players with low-ball bids on the goods you're selling. So, by all means, carry on! Just maybe think about it - I know it would take more time, but maybe if you sold the items for what most people seem to be willing to sell them for - you could help your friends/sg mates, etc even MORE. 
 

 

This goes for buying things as well -- if you overpay for something, thinking that you are subsidizing some unknown Tiny Tim, that inf is probably going in a cowman's coffers.  The casual buyer and seller may not have the will or desire to spend a lot of time thinking about pricing strategies.

 

And that's all well and good, because I've been sinking all my inf into developing an automatic mustache twirling machine.  It's simply too much effort for me to do it myself while I laugh maniacally. 

[Grindingsucks]

7 hours ago, nihilii said:

We can draw from the ample wealth of data we have from other games in the same genre (RPGs), where the staple is character progression and once that character progression stalls, interest wanes.

 

Heck, you can even work backwards and look at the number of NON-RPG games who have added RPG elements over the years to improve player retention. Nowadays you level up in Call of Duty.

It would take an assumption there is something particularly special about CoH to make its playerbase react differently to incentives. As much as I love the game and think it *is* special, I'm not seeing it.

For someone determined to dislike the market, it's also possible to move the goalposts endlessly with experiments. I'd argue the goalposts have already been moved significantly compared to Live, here you can build a fully purpled out character with merits and veteran levels. Whereas the market was a necessary step for realistic timeframes on Live, it became truly optional on Homecoming.

These may all be good arguments, but I haven't got access to any "ample wealth of data" from other games. 

 

I would be interested in viewing this data, and how that data proves that grinding, market systems, and RPG-style levelling positively affect player retention, if you would like to share it.  Your one, specific example of Call of Duty might be helpful, if I could review said data, although it's pertinent to point out that a first person shooter and an MMO with RPG elements are not the same beasts, and may be tantamount to that old saying about comparing apples and oranges.

 

I do dislike the market.  I suppose, for me, this is an exercise in stating the obvious, by now.  I want to be very clear, though- testing theories is not about moving goalposts.  The goal has been, and ever remains, the same: Presenting a game that fixes or removes as many frustrating elements as possible, while adding as many enjoyable elements as possible, in order to retain the largest player base, for the longest amount of time, so that the game may continue to remain relevant and available for play.

 

I would simply like to test the impact of removing buying and selling from the game on player enjoyment and retention.  The downtime could also allow the devs an opportunity to squash bugs in the market that presently exist, and frustrate even those that want the market to remain, so that those issues would be addressed if the test had a negative impact on player retention and the market needed to be reimplemented.

 

Anyway, I don't want to beat this subject to death with a stick and it occurs to me that the OP was specifically addressing ATO's, so my suggestion is fairly off-topic, anyway.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Grindingsucks said:

snip

I do wonder how feasible it would be for the devs to set up a "permanent" test server that would enable you and others to play with no market but full access to whatever items you wanted without the fear that your characters will get eventually deleted?  That could serve as a test case, and players could vote with their feet.

 

[Troo]

22 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I do wonder how feasible it would be for the devs to set up a "permanent" test server that would enable you and others to play with no market but full access to whatever items you wanted without the fear that your characters will get eventually deleted?  That could serve as a test case, and players could vote with their feet.