77 replies to this topic

[Tiewolf]

Anyone else find these sales after sales irritating?

Is PGI so desperately grasping for money because they alienated so many costumers by their actions? Was the RoI of Solaris that bad or do they only take marketing serious these days?

I don`t know but these permanent sales got an odd smell to them.

[BrunoSSace]

Money makes the world turn around.

[Jackal Noble]

I'm more irritated at the lack of MW5 info tbh.

[Monkey Lover]

Im guessing fund raising for MW5. We will know a lot more in 2 months with mechcon. For what i see with the plans for cw update i dont see them putting much more money into mwo. I think the might be planning on dropping the crytek engine.

[Black Ivan]

Something has to pay for the Solaris 7 desaster and for the promised land that is MW5

[El Bandito]

Tiewolf, on 26 September 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

Anyone else find these sales after sales irritating?

Is PGI so desperately grasping for money because they alienated so many costumers by their actions? Was the RoI of Solaris that bad or do they only take marketing serious these days?

I don`t know but these permanent sales got an odd smell to them.

I only find them irritating cause I don't plan to spend real money ATM. Hero MC discount though, I'm all ears. Need to burn the event MCs.

[Shanrak]

Do they really make that much money on the sales though? The player base isn't that big and I can't imagine a high% of players spending money on these sales.

[MrMadguy]

I call it "Do everything for game, but forget to make game itself". Some game devs just don't understand or refuse to understand, that no promotions will help to keep game afloat, if core game is broken. Nobody will buy some shinies, no matter, how good they are, if there is nothing to play, i.e. there is no place to actually use them. They're just pointless.

[Scyther]

Companies who actually understand marketing and sales cycles devote a fair bit of effort to working out their sale schedules.

It's easy, when cash flow is a bit low, to toss a sale out the door. "Ooh that worked, we brought in double the usual! Let's schedule another sale next month!" Then at some point you schedule back-to-back sales, then a holiday sale... pretty soon your client base is accustomed to *only* buying things when they are on sale.

Hence, if you want to sell anything (other than the new mech pack) - you need a sale. It's a fine line to walk between 'having sales as an incentive/addition to normal buying' and crossing into 'customers won't buy unless there is a sale, and you have enough sales that they can afford to wait' territory.

As MrMadGuy mentioned, you can only push mediocre product out the door for so long before people start to question whether there is any actual value to buying this stuff.

[Aramuside]

I'm more irritated by the incessant whining about them from people who rarely/never buy anyway.

[Bud Crue]

We have been in a non-stop monthly "balance" effort since May of 2017.

For over a year now, they have routinely, with few exceptions, broken, nerfed or just randomly changed aspects of mechs you have purchased for any of a variety of BS reasons. Presently up in the developer outreach room (see the pts thread) Chris has been forthright in his statements of future intent that the nerfings and breakage will continue for a variety of reasons. Yet with equal clock-like precision they release a new mech pack (or packs), which the above history and dev statements makes it a near certainty that many if not all such purchases are nearly guaranteed to be broken by them in the near future.

So in a world where nearly everything gets broken and where they tell us flat-out that they will continue breaking, what reason is there to buy the products that they are offering for sale? None. So what must they do? Incentivize. Thus: sales, nonstop sales. If you want to sell broken junk then, ya gotta make the marks think that the broken junk you are selling is a good deal. That's all this is.

Edited by Bud Crue, 27 September 2018 - 03:45 AM.

[Appogee]

Tiewolf, on 26 September 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

Anyone else find these sales after sales irritating?

Is PGI so desperately grasping for money because they alienated so many costumers by their actions? Was the RoI of Solaris that bad or do they only take marketing serious these days?

I don`t know but these permanent sales got an odd smell to them.

Let me get this straight ... you're irritated that you can consistently buy things much more cheaply than their regular price. Do I have that right...?

While it's a shame that PGI have apparently driven their cash cow over a cliff, I don't think we should be 'irritated' that they're now selling steak at cheaper than usual prices.

Irritated at the way they killed MWO - sure. But not irritated by sales.

Edited by Appogee, 27 September 2018 - 03:53 AM.

[Snowbluff]

I like the sales and events feeling more frequent.

[Peter2k]

Tiewolf, on 26 September 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

Anyone else find these sales after sales irritating?

Is PGI so desperately grasping for money because they alienated so many costumers by their actions? Was the RoI of Solaris that bad or do they only take marketing serious these days?

I don`t know but these permanent sales got an odd smell to them.

shrugs

3 possibilities that I can see

- its the end times for MWO, prophesied 5 years ago, all those MWO doom threads can't be wrong , it's at least 1 every month after all

- trying to raise more Money for MW5, while not committing any dev time to MWO (seriously, Paul said quick changes to FP, taking forever still, its been like 2 months since we started having a discussion about quick QoL n stuff)
if you cant pump up the players to spent money with actual content then I'm sure a marketing book somewhere says something about sales, sales, sales

- the lawsuit was expensive

Snowbluff, on 27 September 2018 - 03:53 AM, said:

I like the sales and events feeling more frequent.

Or they could reduce the cost of stuff more permanently and let us pick mechs we want to buy directly.

Not that I'm complaining about building your own drop deck buy stuff, but maybe with the rule of 3 gone they should just implement it permanently.
Maybe they are looking if they can make more money selling "packs" where the players can pick and choose 1 variant

Appogee, on 27 September 2018 - 03:52 AM, said:

Do I have that right...?

yes, also free stuff sucks

look at the other threads always coming up on a regular basis

still, I wish I could sell one of my 2 loyalty Atlai

MadBadger, on 27 September 2018 - 03:25 AM, said:

Companies who actually understand marketing and sales cycles devote a fair bit of effort to working out their sale schedules.

To be fair, other company also put effort into actually creating content and maybe make the game more stable, optimized, more enjoyable and so on.

Its like everything needs to hold together until MW5 comes along or something.

MrMadguy, on 27 September 2018 - 02:59 AM, said:

snip

agreed

Shanrak, on 27 September 2018 - 02:55 AM, said:

Do they really make that much money on the sales though? The player base isn't that big and I can't imagine a high% of players spending money on these sales.

shrugs

They are selling digital items.
And what have been in sales is very old content till not so old, not brand new or soon coming.

look at the drop ship deal, like now for instance
its all old to very old stuff, not necessarily bad, but nothing new in game

Edited by Peter2k, 27 September 2018 - 05:49 AM.

[Rafe Yomin]

You're all missing quotation marks around "sales". You can get better full games for the price of most mechs on "sale".

[Racerxintegra2k]

Bud Crue, on 27 September 2018 - 03:44 AM, said:

We have been in a non-stop monthly "balance" effort since May of 2017.

For over a year now, they have routinely, with few exceptions, broken, nerfed or just randomly changed aspects of mechs you have purchased for any of a variety of BS reasons. Presently up in the developer outreach room (see the pts thread) Chris has been forthright in his statements of future intent that the nerfings and breakage will continue for a variety of reasons. Yet with equal clock-like precision they release a new mech pack (or packs), which the above history and dev statements makes it a near certainty that many if not all such purchases are nearly guaranteed to be broken by them in the near future.

So in a world where nearly everything gets broken and where they tell us flat-out that they will continue breaking, what reason is there to buy the products that they are offering for sale? None. So what must they do? Incentivize. Thus: sales, nonstop sales. If you want to sell broken junk then, ya gotta make the marks think that the broken junk you are selling is a good deal. That's all this is.

Seriously this explains why i'm pretty much done with the game.

[frumpylumps]

Tiewolf, on 26 September 2018 - 10:48 PM, said:

Anyone else find these sales after sales irritating?

Is PGI so desperately grasping for money because they alienated so many costumers by their actions? Was the RoI of Solaris that bad or do they only take marketing serious these days?

I don`t know but these permanent sales got an odd smell to them.

What I find irritating are the people who are looking for any dumb reason to criticize PGI, such sales of all things.

Edited by frumpylumps, 27 September 2018 - 06:40 AM.

[Battlemaster56]

Nope this is a dumb reason to get "irritated" for, I for one like some of these sales recently it open up some things for my wallet for the time being and it's nothing to expensive and I choose what toys I want to get and play around out of boredom.

[Tonberry Knife]

I really hope all of the money brought in by this game isn't going to MW5. That isn't really fair to the people who are trying to support MWO to make it better.

That would be a scumbag move on PGI's part. This game shouldn't be a fundraiser for a different game. If they want to raise money for MW5 they should offer a way for people to support it.

Edited by Tonberry Knife, 27 September 2018 - 08:26 AM.

[MechaBattler]

Perhaps they're building up a marketing budget for MW5's eventual release. They're gonna need to spend money to advertise it unless they want to cut in a publisher like Battletech did with Paradox.

Tonberry Knife, it's a business. They're selling digital goods for money. It's up to them how they devote that money. Though I'm surprised they haven't used MW5 yet to do a cross promotion sale. Buy this mechpack, get extra goodies in MW5.