[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
Limiting items in the shop isn't for maintenance, even larger games do this [I.E. League] and it's mostly a way to get people to buy more of a cosmetic item that they otherwise wouldn't buy if it was there the whole time.
If they really wanted to make bank, they'd just return the items back to the shop and use the Featured Items to highlight items in the shop and make them a sale price. Use it to advertise the store rather than compete with the store. There is no point in hiding items, and it will help keep the broker prices down. Why create a system where you are enabling broker exploiters that don't spend cash in the game and do nothing more than play the broker? They can still make bank, but people should still be able to buy what they want with cash when they want to buy it.
The loot boxes are silly and just a greedy way of doing business. Let us buy a flipping cat pet for 1695 EMP or whatever. I mean, it's just beyond sad when I return to the game to find the cats so out of reach when so many of us were collecting so much of the cat stuff. I don't care about HP or MP replenishment, just let me buy an autoloot cat already and stop making everything so out of reach.
Too many people complain about the price when they do direct buy for rare items people want, and loot boxes are fine, however, there really needs to be a less-expensive alternative for these items. It's not really such a big deal with the dyeable version or the hp or mp replenishment version is in a lootbox. I think most players can understand that. However, when they have a new item and only offer it from a lootbox, that is really sad. Those cats would have been really popular, but since they are only in loot boxes, I don't seem to see them anywhere. Kind of sad really seeing as there is so many other cosmetic items that go with the cats. EME could be making bank, but instead, they choose to be greedy and miss out on a lot of business. I just want a cat. It doesn't have to heal me, give me mp or make me breakfast. I just want a cat to follow me around, so I can be on my cat mount, in the cat outfit and look adorable. I am not paying millions in gold for that.
As far as the grind for gear, for every person saying it's too hard, there is a person saying it's fine or too easy. People like to be elite, and they like to grind for stuff that others don't have. Most of us that don't grind for gear, aren't doing the dungeons and aren't really even needing all of that extra defense and so on. There are a lot of players that simply don't want to grind for gear, and we shouldn't have to or be somehow forced to. I am fine with quests or whatever to get to higher levels, but I and many others like me have no real interest in the whole Apex grind and so on. Now, if they are going to require all of that in addition to loads of other stuff and make 70 the new required level for all rewards, that won't be so great.
Honestly, what you've described shows that artificial scarcity is working. The fact that the price is so high right now makes it rare, and so whenever they do re-introduce it, people are more inclined to buy it right then (before the price goes up again). This allows EME to reintroduce the rarest items at the times when they want to increase their monthly sales, rather than having trickle sales. It also allows them to keep the prices of items relatively high for "old stock" rather than have them depreciate as much. Obviously there are limits to how well this works (for instance, they went a bit too far with the last retirement round and brought a lot of it back), and they will miss some sales by doing this (people who lose interest, people who aren't around at the time, etc.), but it's a fairly proven retail strategy and has been a part of this game's cosmetic economy for years. These "costume investors" (even if they're F2P) are part of what create the demand for costumes that paying customers fulfill; without any likelihood that the value will go up, there's no reason to invest.
Anyway I get your point too, and it makes sense. But at the same time, given that your argument is "if they really wanted to make bank"... I'd be willing to bet they make more "bank" on the whole by manipulating supply/demand than the constant trickle flow approach would yield -- and it almost certainly can help them meet their monthly/quarterly sales targets having this in their back pocket, given that there's no guarantee BHS will keep producing desirable items every month. (My main argument would actually be that they should monitor it more carefully and reintroduce retired items more frequently to ensure certain items aren't allowed to go too overly long.)