3 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

I took a look at what you're selling for this weekend and thought: Why does this sale not interest me?

I have spent zilch on this game, so I expect zlich in return. Even if I were interested in buying stuff, you have to at least give good reasoning to your sales. I'll give 3 tips and show why some of these ideas have been screwed up by existing PGI examples.

1) Sales on Premium Time should correspond with INCREASED stability on your product, NOT the reverse. It is understood in the industry that you can have sales/discounts for something that hs suffered from a bad reputation, but for a game this isn't always optimal. When you sell premium time where complaints and whining about the current stability of the product is at an all time HIGH, there is LESS of an incentive to buy something like this, that would demand MORE of your TIME to play in UNSTABLE conditions. If/when you FIX these problems, a premium time sale would make SIGNIFICANTLY more sense because generally, there will be enough players that are willing to REWARD you for doing a good job. It has been said many times in those sales threads.

2) I made similar comments about double XP weekend, and how the XP->GXP sale is lame, given that you need to actually BUILD good amounts of XP to convert. Double XP weekend should ALMOST ALWAYS be followed by a XP->GXP sale. It's not a crazy novel idea to create the supply (double XP weekend) so this would eventually correspond to something useful in demand (XP->GXP sale). Now, you did the opposite, but you get better attention to SALES when you do it in the "optimal" order. It's practically a no brainer.

3) Heavy sales on a particular non-hero mech variant actually requires the variant to be BALANCED. This is something lost on sales people and the people who balance this game. Yes, you can get "fools" who buys these variants, but let's be honest, selling unpopular variants requires a lot more effort than just a large discount. The 8V that's on sale is similar to the 8R. Had you sold both at a discount, people would actually consider both "equally" viable variants (on paper and spec-wise). However, the 8V by itself isn't very attractive. In fact, it would be easier to get sales on the 9M or the 8T.

Heck, if PGI decided to have a sale on ECM mechs (Raven 3L, Atlas D-DC, Cicada-3M), these would sell VERY quickly. When people talk about how OP/unbalanced mechs are, they are also likely to tell you to NOT buy certain variants just as well, like the Cicada-3C or the Spider-5K. If you cannot properly balance the mechs to be viable in the marketplace, there may be no MC discounts large enough for people to spend their money on. It's just simple VALUE that people want. Why was the K2 popular when there was a sale? It was actually DECENT. You cannot say the same for something like the Atlas-K, which the community at large has said is not that popular. Believe me when I say that "word of mouth" works just as much on MWO as a game, like it does for SELLING MECHS.

There's nothing that says "buyers remorse" when you put out "products" aka "mech variants" that suck and that would make people LESS LIKELY to buy again.

Here's a few other simple ideas:
Have a buy X (like 2 or 3), get a free mechbay sale. Yes, everyone's been asking for mechbay sales, but somehow this escapes you as a simple concept. I've heard of nice tire sales (for cars obviously) where you buy 3, and get the 4th tire free (some of the better ones have the buy 2, get the other 2 free... of course, there's some markup). It doesn't take much to have such a simple sale.

There has always been a clamoring for "buy a hero mech, get a free mechbay" deal, and that probably does require a bit extra backend work to get done (like, the UI won't let you buy a mech w/o a free mechbay available). Why are you unable to properly market a sale on a particular hero mech, and suggest that they could buy a free mechbay with the savings they got?

With all this market research done to get 3rd person added (instead of putting together a tutorial), why can't you use the same research to figure out of simple, common sense ways to get more money? It doesn't require that much effort, but it would get you more purchases with more satisfied customers. The Heavy Metal hero mech release is one step in the right direction (for the most part), but clearly you guys need better ideas to generate better sales. Most of the time, the sales of the most recent deals are hair-brained and thoughtless.

[Team Leader]

+1
I think it would improve as well if mechs bought with MC came with a free mech bay. As it stands, every MC mech costs 300 MC on top of what they already are. Hopefully this is added as a function of the store tab.

Edited by Team Leader, 08 April 2013 - 11:04 AM.

[Deathlike]

The only other idea I forgot to mention is about the Champion mechs.

We all know these are based off of existing mechs and that's fine. The only bonus is that the MC costs is a slight increase, with a small XP bonus of 5%.

IMO, this does not provide enough value to the "Champion" mech. You need to either double the XP bonus to 10%, or add an additional C-bills bonus... something along the lines of 7.5% to 10%. That would increase the VALUE of these mechs reasonably, w/o compromising sales.

Otherwise, these Champion mechs will just be mocked outright, outside of the newbies that buy them. Double XP weekend is FAR more potent than a 5% XP boost. I can wait out for a Double XP weekend... I could care less about a mediocre value in a Champion mech.

[Aym]

Oh yeah, 30% off bad mech but it comes with a mechbay might be more worth while.