I apologize for my tone, and I can't edit my post above, but I am frustrated. I understand that it was far too late in the development cycle to cancel this convention temple, since it was kind of tied in with another event. These things are programmed and planned in advance. I understand. We understand. I said this a few days ago.
However, you could have met us half way, and reduced the requirement threshold for these conventions to succeed, to give us players a little break. That would have been a fair compromise.
Beyond that, if the aim of free to play or "freemium" games is to make money, you are not being very smart about it when it comes to conventions.
You ever watch an auction? If the estimated book value of a collectible is $50,000, they don't start the bidding at $50,000. Unless it's exceptionally rare and demand vastly outstrips supply, no one will bid. People around the world, want to try to get a deal, or at least feel like they. Why do you think everything in stores is priced at 95c or $7.95 instead of just rounding up. It's psychological. They'll start the bidding at a lower amount, with the goal of getting several buyers hooked and into a bidding war. At which point each person is thinking "Ok, I'll go $43,000" and the next is thinking "Ok, I'll go 44,000" and so on. The final auction price of that item may well *exceed* $50,000, but that's only because you got several people on the line, who were only thinking of each increase in their bid amount as a small, incremental change.
I have someone in my family, and they used to use their debit card at almost every place they shopped. This is a bad idea, and if you don't believe me, Frank Abagnale (around whom the film Catch me if you can was loosely based) has multiple videos talking about them. He's been a consultant with the FBI in the fields of forgery and identity theft for 50 years. You see, debit cards, even if they have a Visa or Mastercard logo, are not credit cards. They don't have the same buyer protection and indemnity as a proper credit card. The money for debit cards comes from your checking account, and if they get compromised, lost, or stolen, that money comes from YOU, and you will have a very hard time getting it back. Whereas your credit card often has zero or $50 liability, tops. So if someone 1000 miles away uses your credit card to buy four brand new truck tires, you call up your credit card company, report it as fraudulent, and the bank reverses the charge, cancels your card, and issues you a new card number. From there, THEY contact the authorities and report the theft, cause it was THEIR money that got stolen, not yours.
So why did they do this? Well, because psychologically, they had an easier time processing lots of small payments that got charged to their debit card, and immediately paid from their checking account, without having to make a manual payment. Otherwise, if all those micro charges were made on a credit card, which they had to pay in a lump sum every other week, it seemed like more. Whether you charge $311.87 in the form of 9 small charges to a debit card (which again comes from your checking account) or you make a lump payment of $311.87 from your checking account to your credit card, it's the same amount of money from the same source. Yet, to them, one had the *perception* of being less. Once again, this is why you see things sold on tv as "5 easy payments of just $19.95" instead of being sold as one large charge of $99.95. Same thing, but advertising smaller payments invites consumers to see it as less. They started changing this behavior with their debit card, but you understand my point?
If you LOWERED the threshold for these conventions, and more players looked at them and said "This can pass, I'm in on this".. you hook more fish. You get more people on the line, and perhaps some of them get caught up in the moment, wanting a top 10 finish for a possible collection item, and spend some diamonds. Player's minds look at these smaller amounts here and there, and they process it differently.
BUT when you make the requirements for the conventions so high from the start, most players take one look at it, decide it's never going to pass, and walk away. They give up, and those people are NOT going to spend a dime. Even the spenders will look at a temple and if they think "This is doomed to fail", they will walk away too. That's lost revenue!
So if the point is to make money, my mathematically inclined, half german, perfectionist mind looks at this and goes "Ok, but you could be doing this better". That's not how I originally was going to phrase it, but I'm trying to be less negative in my tone.
Edited by Lizbeth, 06 May 2019 - 11:28 PM.
) and "Nookie for a Wookie" (by one those sexy sexy pink cats).
