DUST Search - Wiser Marketing Choices

Kevall Longstride wrote:

I may get flamed here but I consider the Elite and Veteran packs great value with the BPO's they have. My latest tutorial video is all about using BPO's to keep a players ISK cost down. I've also sent out a crop mail strongly urging players to buy the milita modules now before they go for good.

Having said that I'm happy that they only going to be available in the pack in future as their removal from the marketplace tells me that that player trading is on its way, which is what we'd all prefer to have to be honest.

However, I will say that marketing needs to get their crap together and fast. The Elite packs BPO's should be race themed once the full suit range appears with at least one of each suit class in them. Four seperate Elite and veteran packs for each race.

The vanity items or complete lack of them is also discouraging. I don't want development time being taken from the art department in order to fulfil vanity items, I'd rather they make content for the game itself. But surely, thrid parties could be brought in to design vanity items on a quicker basis?

And what was constantly brought up in the Fanfest round tables when the idea of vanity items was brought up was corporate colour schemes and logos on uniforms and equipment. I'd happily pay at least the cost of an Elite pack just for my mercs to have the D-UNI logo on the sides of their helmet, sleeves, shoulders, chest, what ever is easiest for the assets to be placed. And the cost of a seperate Elite pack for the vehicles to have the same treatment.

I want to give you more money CCP!!!


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Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3156	Posted - 2013.09.30 10:47:00 - [1] - Quote Mostly an offshoot from this thread which details my thoughts toward a better use for the notorious Omega Boosters: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1348598#post1348598 Though, this doesn't just apply to Omega Boosters - I feel that Marketing needs to make better choices all around. I don't think I need to remind the CPM about the conundrum in which Marketing implemented a sale on Contact Grenades when we legitimately had no ISK alternative and they were the source of many unnecessary tears. In this player's opinion, marketing choices need to appeal to a certain type of player rather than the player with the most cash on hand at a specific point in time. While Dust 514 =/= Eve Online, Eve Online has some intriguing options for spending money and none more paramount than the Barbie Doll aspect (clothing from the Aurum store). It's apparently a great way to get people to drop cash and considering the amount of threads wanting Corporation Logos on Ships, let alone Ship Customization, I think CCP Iceland is missing out on a big revenue opportunity in that aspect. But, we're talking about Dust 514. With the removal of the cosmetic options such as the 'Carbon' Assault Suit, players only options for money are the Boosters and faster Weapon/Dropsuit Access. Sure, the 'Neo' variants have some shoddy camo but I don't feel like dropping 100,000 Aurum for something that I'm going to set as my Favorite dropsuit to look sporty in the War Barge and never actually use. While not as prominent or favorable an option, a few members of my own corporation have hinted that they'd spend money for Mercenary Quarters cosmetics... Something I find a little odd considering they're the only ones able to see it but if they're willing to spend money on it it might be worth looking into. To that end, I'm sure there's a great deal of corporations that would pay a hefty sum of Aurum to have their own Corporation Logo - this might be something to look into as a player's identity is everything to them. In summary: More cosmetics More opportunities for new players to close the gap on older players Less over-broad, disparity INCREASING effects (omega boosters)
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3180	Posted - 2013.09.30 23:15:00 - [2] - Quote Bojo The Mighty wrote: I agree, I have been voicing that Vanity gear is really what Aurum should be about. They quickly realized to go the BPO route though because people would buy just one 'Carbon' or 'Kindred' and favorite it and forever walk around the warbarge in style. The BPO route is not bad in terms of revenue generation per use, at least people will look stylish on the battlefield as well. I also think that they should remove the 20GJ 'Spartan' Particle Accelerator from the "Top Sellers" Because it is untruthful I mean, looking flashy is cool and all but I really would like it if it showed my camo-painted Assault Rifle across my back in the War Barge. Obviously this doesn't work very well for heavy weapons like a Forge Gun or a Plasma Cannon (which, I understand is not a Heavy weapon but in terms of size it kind of is). Iron Wolf Saber wrote: /me takes notes. If you have any other folks that have an ax to grind with marketing or possible new monetization options feel free to drag them in here and have them post. I'll talk with my guys after our PC matches tonight and get some ideas going. They're usually pretty creative when it comes to what they'd spend their money on but the Exotic Dancers and Mercenary Quarters are pretty high on the list
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3185	Posted - 2013.10.01 11:03:00 - [3] - Quote Nova Knife wrote: The original version of our wall of text statement had a warning about the dangers of marketing being tempted to push things because they sell well despite being offensive to a large chunk of the playerbase, but we ended up cutting it out. I kind of wish we didn't, but that's just me. Though, when CmdrWang poked me immediately following the statement we made, it was one of the things we discussed. (How things are chosen to go on sale, what kind of process they go into for monetization, etc) and while I don't want to go into detail about the specfics that came up in that conversation... It was illuminating enough that when we manage to wrangle a meeting with the marketing team, we'll know exactly what to say in order to tell them they're making horrible mistakes in the nicest way possible :) I'll drink to that. When asking my corp-mates what they would spend money on, outside of boosters, they said "BPOs" - to which I brought up the fact that they were being removed. There was a few light hearted jokes but I did present the option of BPO's instead being permanent cosmetic items that applied to a suit but you still had to pay for it. So, drop $5 (this is congruent with Warframe prices) and you can have a suit of your choice colored a certain way. Still have to pay for the suit with ISK, but it's permanently colored with awesome. I'm sure this has been discussed by the CPM already, however.
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3217	Posted - 2013.10.02 01:09:00 - [4] - Quote Kevall Longstride wrote: I may get flamed here but I consider the Elite and Veteran packs great value with the BPO's they have. My latest tutorial video is all about using BPO's to keep a players ISK cost down. I've also sent out a crop mail strongly urging players to buy the milita modules now before they go for good. Having said that I'm happy that they only going to be available in the pack in future as their removal from the marketplace tells me that that player trading is on its way, which is what we'd all prefer to have to be honest. However, I will say that marketing needs to get their crap together and fast. The Elite packs BPO's should be race themed once the full suit range appears with at least one of each suit class in them. Four seperate Elite and veteran packs for each race. The vanity items or complete lack of them is also discouraging. I don't want development time being taken from the art department in order to fulfil vanity items, I'd rather they make content for the game itself. But surely, thrid parties could be brought in to design vanity items on a quicker basis? And what was constantly brought up in the Fanfest round tables when the idea of vanity items was brought up was corporate colour schemes and logos on uniforms and equipment. I'd happily pay at least the cost of an Elite pack just for my mercs to have the D-UNI logo on the sides of their helmet, sleeves, shoulders, chest, what ever is easiest for the assets to be placed. And the cost of a seperate Elite pack for the vehicles to have the same treatment. I want to give you more money CCP!!! Now, this is just my opinion but I feel that Standard BPO's should have never existed in the first place. The Elite pack is alright I suppose given that most of the items included have standard stats with militia fittings costs (essentially making them militia). There should be a drawback to using the free stuff, honestly, otherwise you just run into the brick wall that was the Murder Taxi issue in which a bunch of players are running around making kills with a lossless investment and when that gets changed they don't have the skills they need to adapt. To which I made the proposal that BPO's should be universal and apply everywhere, even to Prototype suits, if they only change the color scheme. You'd still have to drop ISK but you'd get a permanent color scheme for your suit - which, honestly, is a far better option than the cosmetic aurum items of before. Reason being is because those aurum suits were cosmetic but entirely expendable. You could by a flashy white/red Scout suit, go in to battle and lose it the very instant you hit the ground because a drop-ship got called on you or something. Now, if it were a BPO, you'd still pay ISK for the normal suit but you'd retain that color scheme indefinitely - making it well worth the $5. Another issue with expendable cosmetics is that, despite them being cheap, you'll eventually run out. So what a lot of players did (and still do) is buy the suit, set it as their favorite and then never use it so they at least look flashy in the war barge. I'm sorry but when CCP has a Mercenary Pack that gives you a 30-day booster, enough aurum for a 30-day passive and some left over, they're not exactly making any money when you only need to buy one suit to get your point across. Of course, now that I bring this up, they're probably going to nyx that option and make it to where you're going to have to buy the suits in bulk xD
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3222	Posted - 2013.10.02 05:03:00 - [5] - Quote Bojo The Mighty wrote: Honestly the Standard level BPOs seem fine to me. Yes people were complaining that they are meta 1 gear and thus should not exist but really it only saves you something like 24-31K SP and 3K ISK. It's only marginal in its benefits. EDIT: No one is going to buy 20GJ'Spartan' Particle Accelerators remove it from the "Top Sellers" I feel like it will either mislead people to waste aurum, considering that they will soon discover they bought a broken weapon, or that it's a waste of space. They need a higher price then (the BPOs).
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3261	Posted - 2013.10.04 04:57:00 - [6] - Quote Garth Mandra wrote: CCP needs to come up with a sustainable way of making money. Supposedly they are in this for the long haul so they need a way to regularly get money from long term players. Boosters are a good start but after a certain point running boosters becomes less appealing. AUR items are not particularly useful in the long term. A player can just skill into whatever it is and then the revenue stream is lost. Cosmetic items are similar to AUR especially if they are permanent. You buy the cosmetics you like and then never again. If they are not permanent then significantly less people will use them I expect. If isk was more valuable and the market was up and running then selling boosters and other AUR items on that could be a sustainable income source for CCP. As it stands though isk is too easy to get and there is nothing to do with large piles of isk. What regular revenue streams do other free-to-play games have? Warframe's system is really intriguing. Can drop money on the warframe itself but you still have to spend time with it for it to be powerful. The color packs system seems expensive at first but when you're getting 50 or so colors per pack it's worth it. Basically, even if you drop money you're still going to have to spend the same amount of time in game grinding through to get that warframe leveled up and all the mods you want - the only difference is you're not grinding the same boss over and over again for the parts of the warframe. Planetside's system is a bit silly to me because on top of cosmetic items you can get boosters to get your weapons faster, with some weapons obviously priced so high that a casual player would have to spend weeks getting the resources to buy that weapon - and that's just getting the weapon, not the upgrades associated with it. Spending those points on vehicles is a bit foolhardy as well as one errant mistake can cause you to lose it and still have to wait 20 minutes to get another one, and getting it is determined by the resources your faction has (which if they're losing, isn't going to be much). Combat Arms has the worst one, imo, in which certain weapons are only available to those who pay (since the last time I played at least) as well as unlocking character skins. Then you have every other MMO which basically gives you boosters but since those games aren't PVP oriented it's not a problem - you're grinding solely for the sake of getting to the level cap faster so that you can play with your friends. They also have silly things like mounts and what not but considering that those get expensive in a hurry ($30 for a mount in Tera, seriously?) you're less likely to buy it. Then you have Eve Online which allows you to spend money to buy PLEX which you can then sell to other players for ISK, which use that to pay for their monthly subscription. You can also purchase Aurum which is used solely for cosmetic purposes, none other. So you can get a lot of ISK in a hurry by dropping real money but honestly Dust 514 has a similar - if not outright better system by allowing you to spend real money on faster access for weapons. I still am adamant that boosters should be reserved for new players with <'x' amount of SP - aurum can still be used on gear and if they ever decide to implement skill spikes (temporary SP) I'd imagine they'd have a hell of a lot more revenue from those than the boosters because you get the SP instantly but it's not permanent, so you can use it for those dire situations like PC matches. Right now, Boosters just increase the disparity between new and old players exponentially. It's not about who's had the account for longer anymore, it's about who's had the account for longer and had the money to drop for stockpiles of these boosters. Two players start out in May, 2013 and one will inevitably have more SP just because of this. Meaning that any player who came after not only cannot catch up, but they are exponentially at a disadvantage SP wise.
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3271	Posted - 2013.10.05 11:48:00 - [7] - Quote SponkSponkSponk wrote: I bet corp members would pitch in a bunch of aurum to kit out a hypothetical shared merc quarters with stuff. But tbh an isk booster is a pretty standard desire. That's an interesting take. Have a social quarters available to corporations that drop Aurum... Nothing pay-to-win about it at all, just if the corporation wants to view their mates standing around pointlessly they can pay for it. Kind of a love/hate idea. Serves no purpose but if you want to have that face-to-face communication it's definitely something.
Aeon Amadi A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S. 3274	Posted - 2013.10.05 17:51:00 - [8] - Quote Vrain Matari wrote: Aeon Amadi wrote: SponkSponkSponk wrote: I bet corp members would pitch in a bunch of aurum to kit out a hypothetical shared merc quarters with stuff. But tbh an isk booster is a pretty standard desire. That's an interesting take. Have a social quarters available to corporations that drop Aurum... Nothing pay-to-win about it at all, just if the corporation wants to view their mates standing around pointlessly they can pay for it. Kind of a love/hate idea. Serves no purpose but if you want to have that face-to-face communication it's definitely something. Or how about this, to make a soft transition for CCP: Allow corp-based cosmetic modifications that get applied to every individual merc's quarters who is a corpie. (EDIT: credit to Sponk-Sponk here - didn't see you post above, mate, apologies.) CEOs, Directors, or the Corp Designer could buy and apply esthetic mods that render in all merc quarters identically. I imagine there would be a whole mini-game and meta-game around critiquing the CEO's bad taste, with ensuing flame wars, corps splitting along esthetic lines and entire alliances falling because of a bad design review in EON ;) Oh gawd, that'd be too much corruption in power. Bad enough they choose terrible alliance names.