98 replies to this topic

[Lily from animove]

Dimento Graven, on 08 December 2016 - 09:50 AM, said:

Why wouldn't PGI just publish the odds?

And yeah, as I understand it when you're researching the viability of product (or the marketing of a product) you take a given potential population, in this case all of China, then you figure out your target demographics, age, sex, education level, income level, etc. and come up with what your 'general target consumer' looks like, then from that you find out how much of a given population matches that, and that's your total of potential customers.

Given that China is something close to 1.5 billion in population, the amount of people matching the target demographic could be in the billions.

Anyway, enough of this, I'm not a marketing genius, I only play one on TV, or something like that anyway...

it depends on the buisness case. Someone will have to judge if they think making the % public will result in less keys bought. If the expected loss is supposed to hurt more than losing the chinese customer parts then they will not want those odds to be public. No one surely thinks that providing the odds will increase the sales because if that would be the expectation, those odss would already have been published. also it is quite possible that odds may be changed from time to time, so when sales happen it may not be unlikely that someone lowers thise % a bit.

Chines are mostly like many asians more into RPG games, so a game like MWO might not have such a big target audience, just look in their subforum and see how many activity there is. Oh wait, there isn't even a chinese subforum, so they aren't even enough to justify an own subforum. They ar ejsut gathered in the "APAC/Oceanic" one

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

They don't have to, I can, and we all know the odds already.

You will get something out of the box 100% of the time.

Plus, the "odds" are posted on the list of loot, from Common to Rare. Exactly what people asked for and got.

yes but the law will force them to show the exact odds for every single possible item in the box, which is an entire different quality of information then just "legendary" which could range form 0,01%-10%

Edited by Lily from animove, 08 December 2016 - 10:03 AM.

[KoalaBrownie]

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 08:49 AM, said:

Soon as the Chinese Government show odds of seeing Gold Farmers in our online games, Ok.

Until then, **** China.

So you're mad at china for trying to strengthen your knowledge as a paying consumer? Okay, good strategy. Were you saying **** europe and **** EA's Origin before competitive & legal pressure from them helped bring product refunds to Steam?

[Jman5]

Spheroid, on 08 December 2016 - 08:52 AM, said:

Or what? PGI has no assets in China. The game servers are elsewhere and financial transactions servers are not in China. They have no leverage. Do they even have enough manpower to review and sanction every online game in the world? Lets be realistic.

Also a game developer that struggles to deliver core game features is not going to bend over backwards to appease the Chinese government. The game will be dead long before that unlikely scenario.

They receive a complaint, they investigate it, they send PGI a form letter telling them to comply with these regulations or they will block the IP Address in China. Whether or not PGI cares is dependent on how much of their revenue comes from Chinese customers. I have no idea, but I'm guessing it's negligible.

Either way, this is a positive rule that will take the gaming industry into a healthier place. Particularly for a lot of the Pay 2 Win and the "totally not gambling (wink wink)" games that are so popular in parts of Asia.

Edit: My only concern is that until the West wises up to this growing issue, we're going to start seeing developers releasing two separate odds tables. One for their Chinese version and another one for the rest of us.

Edited by Jman5, 08 December 2016 - 10:39 AM.

[Lily from animove]

KoalaBrownie, on 08 December 2016 - 10:01 AM, said:

So you're mad at china for trying to strengthen your knowledge as a paying consumer? Okay, good strategy. Were you saying **** europe and **** EA's Origin before competitive & legal pressure from them helped bring product refunds to Steam?

the funny part is the gold farmers are a result of the lazy western country gamers willing to even buy gold - lol. can't blame china for that.

[TWIAFU]

Lily from animove, on 08 December 2016 - 09:58 AM, said:

yes but the law will force them to show the exact odds for every single possible item in the box, which is an entire different quality of information then just "legendary" which could rnage form 0,01%-10%

I'd almost feel bad for Blizzard if I didn't hate them so much.



Not like PGI has anything to worry about in our lil niche game from a small Canadian company and non-existent Chinese population.

But this is good for laughs, I will give them that.

[Lily from animove]

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 10:06 AM, said:

I'd almost feel bad for Blizzard if I didn't hate them so much.



Not like PGI has anything to worry about in our lil niche game from a small Canadian company and non-existent Chinese population.

But this is good for laughs, I will give them that.

yes generally it is good, too many asian games have a superbad habit of these practices.
and about contorllign it, the second part says about that they have to make every roll public on a site or ingame, so this will grant a control if the odds are true quite easy. (unless the devs add some more lucky dummy accounts to change the overall odds).

[FireStoat]

PGI can safely ignore this. If the Chinese government blocks the game from being played by their mainland population, the people wanting to play will just use VPN's / Proxies to get around it which is what they're currently doing now to skirt around the "Great Firewall of China".

The whole issue of censorship is a joke. PGI should stick to their guns and run the game they way they set out to run it and not change over something as silly as this.

[Lily from animove]

FireStoat, on 08 December 2016 - 10:09 AM, said:

PGI can safely ignore this. If the Chinese government blocks the game from being played by their mainland population, the people wanting to play will just use VPN's / Proxies to get around it which is what they're currently doing now to skirt around the "Great Firewall of China".

The whole issue of censorship is a joke. PGI should stick to their guns and run the game they way they set out to run it and not change over something as silly as this.

Time to open up a prox provider buisness

For smaller game slike MWo it may not matter but for huge ones like blizzard or all the asian MMO's who have direct sales and offerings in china they will not be possible to get around this.

Edited by Lily from animove, 08 December 2016 - 10:14 AM.

[Dimento Graven]

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 09:57 AM, said:

They don't have to, I can, and we all know the odds already.

You will get something out of the box 100% of the time.

Plus, the "odds" are posted on the list of loot, from Common to Rare. Exactly what people asked for and got.

I get what you're saying, however, I believe the article mentioned that the actual percentage/odds need to be listed, not just a generic "term" which could have different meanings under different circumstances (like what are the actual odds on getting a rare when there are TWO rares in the box, etc.). Or does certain types of loot have the actual adds behind the meaning change, like a 'mech being a "rare", but a non-mech "rare" is a 5% chance of winning, where when a 'mech shows up as the "rare" item, the "rare" chance is reduced to 2.5%, etc.

It's not impossible, or even unlikely, that PGI could be doing this sort of thing.

BUT, again, why wouldn't PGI post the actual odds somewhere, if they haven't already done so?

It's not like it'd change anything, so, sure why not do it?

[C E Dwyer]

I don't see the issue, why are people making such a big deal out of it.

China has said this must happen, P.G.I put the percentages out there, if the chinese playing population is large enough to make a few people rage and maybe quit, from around the world, when they find out exactly how low the chances are for anything greater than uncommon.

If the player base in china is so low it isn't worth the effort of putting up the percentages on the website, they won't

If not China block the ability to play M.W.O there, maybe maybe not.

I don't remember the Chinese saying **** America when congress banned wire gambling. This is just part of the actions China is taking to try and control it's own gambling problems.

I wish they would ban wire gambling here to

Edited by Cathy, 08 December 2016 - 10:19 AM.

[SmithMPBT]

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 08:49 AM, said:

Soon as the Chinese Government show odds of seeing Gold Farmers in our online games, Ok.

Until then, **** China.



One major flaw, you are gambling in Vegas, your not gambling in MWO.

But if you want to gloss over that kinda important detail, sure, whatever floats your boat.

Have you seen the money wheel every vegas casino has? You pay 1 dollar and they spin it, its mostly junk prizes like MWO with one or 2 good ones. Exact same concept, but in vegas you can visually see your odds by the number of wedges on the wheel.

In MWO the wedges mean nothing and are completely unrelated to your odds. Thats the complaint.

[Dimento Graven]

Lily from animove, on 08 December 2016 - 10:05 AM, said:

the funny part is the gold farmers are a result of the lazy western country gamers willing to even buy gold - lol. can't blame china for that.

Yeah, uh no, not quite.

Someone paying attention realized there was a market for this, realized they had access to excessively cheap labor they could exploit, to turn a profit.

That's pretty much the same for every frickin' product bought and sold world wide.

Or are people who buy sliced bread from the grocery store lazy because they didn't grow the wheat themselves, grind it to flower them selves, and then bake the bread and slice it themselves?

Maybe, but the more reasonable assumption is that people have decided their time is worth more than the cost of having someone else produce the item for them.

How valuable is your time?

[C E Dwyer]

Lily from animove, on 08 December 2016 - 10:05 AM, said:

the funny part is the gold farmers are a result of the lazy western country gamers willing to even buy gold - lol. can't blame china for that.

Lazy sums it up

<---has never bought gold from a third party site, so is not a part of the problem

[Dimento Graven]

FireStoat, on 08 December 2016 - 10:09 AM, said:

PGI can safely ignore this. If the Chinese government blocks the game from being played by their mainland population, the people wanting to play will just use VPN's / Proxies to get around it which is what they're currently doing now to skirt around the &quot;Great Firewall of China&quot;.

The whole issue of censorship is a joke. PGI should stick to their guns and run the game they way they set out to run it and not change over something as silly as this.

As with most things, that's only true of those who have the knowledge of how to do it, are motivated to actually do it, and willing to risk getting caught while doing it.

That probably ends up resulting in the vast majority of people just living with the censorship since the risk in getting caught could result in extensive penalty.

[naterist]

Pgi, refuse to comply just to spite them. Do that for me, and ill never complain about **** again.

[TWIAFU]

KoalaBrownie, on 08 December 2016 - 10:01 AM, said:

So you're mad at china for trying to strengthen your knowledge as a paying consumer? Okay, good strategy. Were you saying **** europe and **** EA's Origin before competitive & legal pressure from them helped bring product refunds to Steam?

Sure, strengthen my knowledge.

List what games that are allowed to be played by the Chinese Government, in China, that this will effect?

And how will that work with the "fatigue system" software added to games in China?

Why do all that when PGI can simply turn off the loot boxes for China. Easiest solution. Done.

[Dimento Graven]

SmithMPBT, on 08 December 2016 - 10:18 AM, said:

Have you seen the money wheel every vegas casino has? You pay 1 dollar and they spin it, its mostly junk prizes like MWO with one or 2 good ones. Exact same concept, but in vegas you can visually see your odds by the number of wedges on the wheel.

In MWO the wedges mean nothing and are completely unrelated to your odds. Thats the complaint.

Well the stated 'rarity' implies that the 'wedges' of that MWO prize wheel are different sizes. Where a rare item is on a single thin sliced 'wedge' and common items are on huge slices...

But again, I don't see a problem posting the odds.

I doubt for many people it will change their unlock habits one bit.

[Anjian]

Good.

Great way to deal with the scammy pay to win games over there, as well as games that are practically online gambling.

[TWIAFU]

Dimento Graven, on 08 December 2016 - 10:16 AM, said:

I get what you're saying, however, I believe the article mentioned that the actual percentage/odds need to be listed, not just a generic "term" which could have different meanings under different circumstances (like what are the actual odds on getting a rare when there are TWO rares in the box, etc.). Or does certain types of loot have the actual adds behind the meaning change, like a 'mech being a "rare", but a non-mech "rare" is a 5% chance of winning, where when a 'mech shows up as the "rare" item, the "rare" chance is reduced to 2.5%, etc.

It's not impossible, or even unlikely, that PGI could be doing this sort of thing.

BUT, again, why wouldn't PGI post the actual odds somewhere, if they haven't already done so?

It's not like it'd change anything, so, sure why not do it?

I get what your saying too Big D. May or may not agree with you but have a good line of thought and good debate, enjoy continuing those.

[Dimento Graven]

TWIAFU, on 08 December 2016 - 10:27 AM, said:

I get what your saying too Big D. May or may not agree with you but have a good line of thought and good debate, enjoy continuing those.

Heh, thanks dude!