You asked!: Torment of Velious is on Sale!

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Veteran_BetaTester, Sep 1, 2020.

  1. KermittheFroglok Augur

    Enclee is very correct in that someone behind the scenes is probably looking at how much the "whales" are spending and figuring out what they will pay and what they're buying. That in part is likely why the expansion tier offerings changed to the extent the 50% discount was no longer compatible, but I suspect they are testing if they can get more from the whales, I would've.

    To add to Enclee's point around analysis/algorithms or to put the expansion tiers & discount change into context, about a year and half ago I noticed a senior financial analyst position posted at DBG, I suspect that role changing is in part why we're starting to see bundling & pricing changes. It might also be why there was finally a green-light to start rotating in older cosmetics back into the Marketplace.

    Here's a link to the listing I'm referring to.

    https://lensa.com/senior-financial-analyst-fpa-jobs/san-diego/jd/5052b017e22f592abfe1b3168f61a089

    Looking at the past year I think it's obvious that someone else is looking into DBG's analytics and interpreting a different course of action for their monetization. Just a fun observation.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Coagagin like this.
  2. Tappin Augur

    Most price increases occur from a loss or additional cost, not from monopolistic behavior. I highly doubt it’s any different here and certainly not worth the gamble.
  3. enclee Augur

    Apple disagrees with that premise. You keep wanting to apply the hypothetical reasons from an economics class, and not the actual life scenarios.
    Velisaris_MS likes this.
  4. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    As other posters have alluded to, you derive your argument from the faulty premise that the optimal pricing range does not exceed your arbitrary point on the demand curve.

    In other words, everything above a certain point has to be explained for by other, possibly convoluted, reasons; "lower demand" or "game is dying" when, in fact, there may be high demand to justify the higher price point.

    The macro environment is a free market. The individual can opt in or opt out of the market (buy in or walk away). The aforementioned micro strategy is to wait for the discount at the appointed time: "game the [marketing] system."

    As a purported economist, you seem highly selective and biased in your argumentation.
  5. KermittheFroglok Augur




    No, and your response misrepresents or incorrectly relays the concepts I'm pointing to, I didn't point to "monopoly pricing", also please understand that niche segmentation ≠ monopoly, and I even acknowledged that EQ is price elastic enough that players will eventually stop paying & the expansions will stop being developed.

    I'm going to simplify it down to an elementary school level for you:

    Imagine EQ is a private recreational sports club/league (service) that rents a building or field, imagine facility size cannot decrease for the associated sport(s). Imagine membership drops of said club/league but they want to keep playing, however the rent for the facility stays the same. In this case, supply is unchanged, but the dues/membership fees must increase because fewer people are paying for the facilities. Replace the sports field or facility with EQ expansions, and there you go. (I hope most would agree that the expansions are already about as small as many of us are willing to pay for, so there's not much more DBG can trim in terms of content...)

    That's a very cut/dry example of how the price needs to go up when the demand has actually decreased.
  6. KermittheFroglok Augur

    You know what, let's all calm down and agree:

    -We're disappointed with the ToV expansion bundles
    -We're disappointed that we didn't get the 50% discount this year.

    We can argue all we want but shouting at each other isn't going to get the price down. It's not our fault there likely has been some changing of the guard in DBG's Finance department.

    Maybe we should all collectively try to outline what we would like to see instead or what would entice us to pay what DBG wants for Collector's & Premium editions. Then maybe we can collectively try to make the case as to what we want changed.

    Like seriously, looking back the DBG staff seems to be more willing to entertain changes when we all mostly agreed we wanted something changed, I mean we recently got:

    -Veteran AA for everyone
    -Old Items Rotating through the Marketplace
    -Old Collector/Premium Expansion bundles
    -Another Round of Free Heroics for the 21st Anniversary
    -More GM's on the TLPs (an improvement at least)

    Whoever is now doing the DBG monetization analysis & decision making is definitely open to letting the DPG team offer new/different things, this past year we've gotten a ton more than I really believed we would, I mean I never believed we'd get any of those five things.

    Maybe we should just start a thread with what we want to see in an expansion bundle and if we all behave maybe the Dev team will bring it to the finance & product offer folks?

    Just a thought on where we could take this discussion. We're all obviously very passionate about this topic, why don't we just pool it together?
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  7. Tappin Augur

    You absolutely did point out, on multiple occasions, monopolistic behavior. Also, there are other companies out with directly competing with EQ. To suggest that they didn’t potentially lose business in this regard, lacks any diligence.
  8. KermittheFroglok Augur


    Nope, reread my posts, I'm explicitly saying "niche", not monopoly. There is a distinct difference in that we do have alternatives (but to a much lesser degree) and therefore there is more price elasticity than you'd observe in a true monopoly. The major take away is that the traditional demand curve is not applicable from a supply/demand perspective because EQ isn't directly comparable to other mainstream MMOs, but players will eventually leave if prices get high just not as soon as other MMOs.

    The confusion is understandable though in hindsight if you didn't study the area more.
  9. Tappin Augur

    There’s absolutely no confusion man, you go read what you wrote. Again, There’s absolutely no evidence that DP reduced sale price to milk a few cash cows. It’s literally the opposite of what the rest of industry is doing.
  10. enclee Augur

    No, it’s not absurd this is a 21 year old game with an extremely loyal audience that has proven its willingness to spend. They ran a 25% sale, because they know people will still buy it. There will still be people out there that view the sale as a good deal and pick it up for a box or add a new box.

    On the flip side running a 25% sale versus a 50% won’t cut into new expansion sales. The discount is at the point, where people weigh the cost of the sale versus the next expansion, example this thread and every expansion on sale thread.

    In summary, you take advantage of an individual’s susceptibility to sales while minimizing the loss of new expansion sales.
  11. KermittheFroglok Augur


    I never described the business as "milking cash cows" or exploitative like say EA or Bethesda,that's not remotely what I said.

    In another thread related to the Marketplace I even thanked a Dev for being transparent on some things related to it and what they may or may not list soon. While I used the term "whales", there's nothing wrong with that because it is literally an industry term for players that spend more on a software entertainment service. A few posts ago on this thread I was pointing out overall appreciation that we're getting some fresh & needed changes to what DBG has been offering us.

    I described DBG as likely having hired or at least assigning a different professional analyst to look at the data on EQ's "whales" spending, changing the product offering accordingly to cater to them specifically, and adjusting the pricing to see if they'd pay for it. That's how business decisions on product/pricing are and should made in a successful business, again if I was new to DBG and the EQ IP, I'd probably try something similar. You might not agree but often pricing decisions come down to some degree of trial and error, you never know how customers will react in a free market.

    I'd go so far as to guess that if they hired someone new to help look at their monetization the man/woman is probably 3-5 years experienced but still is:

    1) in the process of getting formal analytics training (industry cert. or grad. school), which you would naturally need to do for your career after a few years experience
    and/or
    2) relatively new to the gaming industry or at least from the monetization & pricing perspective. Also, that's not an issue, financial analysts jump industries all the time, a good analyst should be able to.

    I'm not knocking on them either I'm just trying to extrapolate the level of analytical skill & industry experience of whoever is now working in DBG's Finance department based off decisions made that were just a little off relative to similar mistakes I've personally made or seen second hand in my experience. I suspect it's someone seasoned enough to be proficient at identifying trends but still developing the industry knowledge or analytical skill set needed to convert it into revenue (without making contradictory recommendations).

    For example, this year we saw heroics both bundled with ToV's higher tiers & also distributed for free to make Overseer more accessible/marketable. Someone saw an opportunity to use heroics to bolster expansion value or make Overseer accessible, they just missed the detail that using the heroics for both zapped a lot of the higher ToV tier's value proposition & it limited the fall discount lever made available to them. I suspect someone more familiar with EQ (whoever was doing it before) wouldn't advise (or not raise reservation about) using the heroics in both the expansion & Overseer marketing.

    But again, I'm not knocking on DBG or whoever made those product/pricing decisions because that's how business works, sometimes you try to offer your customer something better and increase the price to do so, but it doesn't pan out as well as you'd hope. It's just bound to happen.

    My real point is that DBG functions like a business, they have professionals that try to sift through the data to figure out how to earn revenue based off customer preferences. Those professionals are human and might occasionally make well intentioned decisions we don't like.

    To digress, there's really no value add spending time on guessing why DBG made some of the decisions they recently made. But if there's someone trying new things with EQ then now is the time for us to get along and try constructively pitching what we want to the Devs in terms of future expansions.
  12. KermittheFroglok Augur


    I don't know if I agree with this either. I think its more than just DBG charging us more because they think they can.

    Someone clearly tried looking at the ToV expansion tiers and tried adjusting them to better appeal to us. Despite the name, I think the F&F tier was blatantly directed to super whales. Overall I like what it offers because (heroics & bags aside), it's mostly stuff I would buy separately. I just can't justify buying as many of it as I want because where its priced, but I get they can't drop the prices to what I want due to things like the heroics...

    I think the issue is that someone newer tried making the changes and is still getting a feel for the EQ playerbase's preferences. To add another example to the one from my last post, I still don't get why they'd think we'd want 2 or 3 bags with the premium or F&F editions. I think someone saw bag/potion bundles were popular on TLPs and just dumped tons of them into the ToV editions not understanding that well... anyone on Live that frequently buys collector's/premium already has a lot of expansion bags by now lol... (Not complaining, just the bags didn't sway my decision either way, it just felt like a very awkward change)
  13. Leerah Augur

    Not an economist or marketing expert, but a savy consumer. Here's what would make me spend money:
    1. Site license or multiple expansions discount. If there were a good enough deal, I'd buy expansions for 16 accounts for things like extra bank slots.
    2. If Gold members earned experience faster. Don't know why this hasn't been done before.
  14. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Given how many people box, why they simply don't sell dicounted "multi-packs" of expansions is beyond me.

    If they sold 3, 6, or 12 packs of expansions (standard editions)...say each one discounted 15% for buying in bulk...I bet a lot more people would buy the expansions at release than wait a year and buy them when they go on sale.
    Leerah and Zamiam like this.
  15. Zamiam Augur

    I know I would if they discounted in bulk for like 3 ,6, 9, 12 etc.. and the more expansions you bought the bigger the discount ..
    and im not talking about the normal 10% off for being an all access member ..
    Leerah likes this.
  16. Duality Augur

    I'll buy 12 FNF packs lol
    Leerah likes this.
  17. Leerah Augur

    Right? And for guildies who can't afford them. Maybe they don't want us reselling them for kronos.
  18. Zamiam Augur

    make them so they can only be traded once ? if that is possible i dont know
    Leerah likes this.
  19. Bobokin Augur

    Do you see this high demand? Do you believe the demand curve has shifted, and the higher price will bring the same number of sales, thus higher returns?

    Whatever market analysis is made, it is based on supply of a product and demand for that product. Everquest is not price inelastic. A movement in price will bring a drop in demand. A drop in demand will force higher prices. My premise is that the prices are either above the equilibrium or the demand for Everquest product is decreasing. Being that the "lifetime" accounts no longer generate revenue, this is likely the case.

    A buying strategy that waits for a sale is not "gaming" the market - especially if that sale is a well known constant. You act like no one else had this information, and some players were taking advantage of it while others could not.
  20. Bobokin Augur

    I did not make a career claim, so what are you calling out. I stated I was NOT in marketing, and I am an economist. Both are true statements.



    That may be so, but I am not a financial analyst for a corporation.



    Economists often do more than that, but I agree EQ is a niche product, and I have indicated so in my posts. In fact, I stated if it was no so, it would be gone.

    It is all opportunity costs. Even a niche product like EQ has competition from similar products.



    Other than server costs, this is pretty much correct, and it changes what? If anything, it means the game is more dependent on the demand curve and pricing depending on price elasticity of the product.



    Correct, but that was already figured into the initial offering. 50% of a higher initial price is still more that 50% of a lower price. Changing that to 25% with the portion of the demand that is more price elastic is a risk.



    I agree. DBG is basically trying to get what they can out of the game before closing it up. I would rather them make a better game to create higher demand rather than create a higher price for those players that will still purchase the product.



    For some products, I agree. I disagree that it the case for all products, and that is my point.