[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
Old Tera stuffs
Hello everyone... well... i was offline few months and now when im back there is so much new.
But atm i would like to talk about costumes and why tera deletes them? I would like to buy costumes/weapon skins etc, but i cant find them in store and in TB they cost so much... oes Tera will bring back old costumes etc so we can enjoy them again?
But atm i would like to talk about costumes and why tera deletes them? I would like to buy costumes/weapon skins etc, but i cant find them in store and in TB they cost so much... oes Tera will bring back old costumes etc so we can enjoy them again?
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Comments
Recently they came out with an elin costume box. It had a chance of giving virtually any elin costume, including discontinued items. As you can imagine it was a massive success. I don't usually spend money on lootboxes but even I purchased like, a dozen of them or something. The takeaway from that event, and the weapon skin box event just like it, is that customers are ...
a) willing to spend money on tera when it's for things they want
b) in need/want of items they can no longer obtain due to unnecessary discontinuations on virtual clothing items
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'd spend more money on this game if the store stopped removing the things that I like. Seasonal items are one thing, but I remember a few months ago when you guys removed every old school outfit, every maid outfit, and so on. For what purpose? It's digital stuff. No kid is making each dress in a sweatshop. What does it actually cost to keep it around compared to the lost money of no one ever being able to purchase it from you again, ever? I legit don't understand. Like, I'm sitting here with disposable income that I want to spend but can't because there's nothing good left in your shop after you discontinued more than half of it a few months ago. Even the argument that we just do what kTera does, still doesn't explain WHY we're removing cosmetic items that people can purchase. Are you saving them, to bring them back for a big sale? When? And why even wait? Why not keep the item in stock year round, but have sales like steam does where you just gouge the price or something? I can't wrap my head around this at all.
Tnx for info.
Bingo... i dont understand why they do that... i would also spend money for old costumes but i cant only becouse they dont exist anymore... and i guess i just now need to wait some events when they will bring back something from old costumes.
Thats why they retired the costumes, so that you are more likely to buy em when they come back on sale for fear that you might not be able to for a long while. Creates sort of a demand for em.
Supposedly it increases the value of the item as it's only available for a short period of time, making sell for higher when they re-release it. In practice, using the same strategies as other business in MMOs gaming is so flawed I can't begin to list why. Then again, if we had smarter decision-makers around here, there'd be a CS Ladder/Airship kill count, a Kumas Royale remaining HP Kumas Boss for whoever takes it, there would've been a Heal count for Nexus (yeah, I know, that's BHS, my point is general).
While I agree EnMass does an overall a good job handling their game, there sure is progress to be made in some areas, even as just publisher.
It may be annoying to people who just want to be able to buy an old product when they want it, but it definitely works. Every time EME brings back retired or seasonal costumes, new attention is brought to them that wouldn't otherwise be there if they were just old news. In the meantime, it clears up the store to be more focused on newer products. I totally understand why people don't like it, but I can't in good faith claim that it's flawed.
-No1: Coherence
While change of minds are (read: can be) part of a marketing strategies, an appreciated and valuable part is coherence. On one hand you have a several thousands of Jadeheart (a Stamina mount, which was worth its amount of money back then and =>cash shop<= only), on the other actually withholding items, meaning an indirect "no" to your costumer while you previously showered him with valuable gifts. Granted this was during the Steam release ...
-No2: Who buys ?
Let us simply analyse (at our level of course, as we obviously don't have the real datas. But we can come close to them even by guessing) "who" makes a purchase. As a fierce leveler, I see and know a good portion of people who start the game don't see it through even 65, let alone stay and do the things a maxed characters does; yet of this mass of players lots of them do wear a costume, a mount or a weapon-skin. This ephemeral but very real array of costumers stays only for so long, and they buy what they see is pretty/cool/kawai/whatever fits them, on the spot. Taking stuff away from the shop simply takes one more thing this market can buy during their limited time on TERA. That, EnMass knows how true it is more than anyone else (let's once again bring up Steam release ?).There might be a market of veteran players, but I'd really be interested to see how much the mass of people passing by stands compared to our beloved pay-to-win players.
-No3: Keep your money
The basic saying "NO" to someone who wants to give you money; this is where I'm digging my "flawed" from. It's all part of a tactic, they have something in mind and they know what they're doing; I believe none of it. I might be cynical, but the whole lot of what I can think of of "old items" are under 30k on Broker (Tempest Reach), and this has its reasons, mostly Kyra. Add it to No1 on incoherence, but also to No4, right below. Nevertheless, this convinces me of the lack of thought, built and planned strategies, and convinces me of the "let's do it on the fly" aspect of the decision making process.
-No4: Make costumer HAPPY
Another thing that could be tied to No1. Pleasing your costumer is the basic. There has been countless forum threads about "why can't I get this items ?!", where all these people are met is "they took it out of cash shop". Meanwhile events run rampant in giving free stuff and cosmetic, lowering the value of the said items, leading to No5.
-No5: People hoarding
Events after events, I'm personally sitting on top of 20 Jadehearts, a few bunny masks and so on, as a non-hardcore player. A year after the events, these are still almost as cheap as while the event was running, or at least in the same array of prices, as they were so much stuffed in our faces when the event happened. Assuming a lesser gain during events, convert all these potential products into current EMP prices; the stocks would be much more balanced in the long run. There would be competition between event earned and cash shop bought, a clash that'd penalize cash shop sellers on short term, but then the balance would've been restored eventually. Assuming lesser gain during event, again, there might've been even people buying said item directly from cash shop out of spite of getting unlucky during event (event + a sale on event item ? now this seems like an idea worth considering). That is if we assume the events as if they were RNG boxes, and I know I'm gonna get shouted at for even saying this out loud.
-NoBonus: TERA Economy sucks.
There is no control whatsoever, no constant, no bounds. Everything in this game is granted to the players (bunch of spoiled crybabies who complain and would rather leave than to get 1k KS for a loss ... that's another topic, sorry, just ranting), but even more so when there is an act of inputting in-game benefit directly from money/events. This seems normal in TERA, but this simple act is something much more dire, delicate, incredibly touchy than people seem to realise; and so is the fact that, from patches to patches, years after years, everything in this game fluctuates. Classes, prices, benefits, using the former, taking advantage of the middle and waiting the right time for the latter and one can be settled with several millions of gold for the upcoming one or two years (which, in a MMO's life, is huge).
When I hear "MWA removed from LoT", all I can think of is "this is the solution for botters ... ? just remove it ?". when I see "increased/reduced gold from vanguard", all I think of is "what about all these people who made this much more/less money ?" You can go on. This may sound like the biggest ©QQ Cumber©, nevertheless this isn't what balance is about.
Where this topic interests our matter and becomes relevant is when it comes to EMP price; an arbitrary value set by those who buy it. A value that spins as much as everything. I would be interested, once again, to see if there is actually a higher volumn of EMP buying related to EMP sellers during item release. I wish there could be a way to see this.
Handling a market is a MOST delicate task and why I am going out of my way to explain it is mostly because none realises, and I include those who do make the actual decisions, and with all this being said, I am overall happy with how EnMass handles things, on their level of publisher.
I am not re-reading this, good luck with typos, double words and sentences that don't make sense, at least it's out of my head.
2) I'm not convinced - are these people going to dig through many pages of costumes to find the one thing they like and buy that before they leave the game? Like most F2P games, a very small percentage of players will ever spend any money on TERA, and a small portion of those spend a lot. For the "here today, gone tomorrow" players, you hope that whatever's new/current will appeal to them (or anything else in the already large selection still on the store), and/or that their interest will be piqued when you reintroduce them and thus have a new marketing push. This is of course why you time the reintroduction to coincide when many new players will be in the game (such as the Elin Garment Box with Ninja launch).
3) Well, this is mostly your cynicism speaking. Sometimes knowing when not to take someone's money, to be able to ask for or get more when the time is right, is an essential part of strategy.
4) I'm not sure that I would really put "happiness" in this equation, but obviously they do have to consider the potential customer dissatisfaction when somebody wants to buy something but it is no longer available, and they are told they have to wait until it makes a return. But I think time has shown that many people are indeed willing to wait and will take the opportunity to buy when it comes back.
5) For the most part, the items they give away during events like those are not cash shop items (e.g. Jadeheart), or they're not highly-desirable cash shop items (e.g. accessories). So people hoarding these particular items does not apply to retired/seasonal cash shop cosmetics by in large. Yes, it's true that people do hoard these too, but in general demand outstrips supply over time. Obviously it's much easier (cheaper) to hoard event items than cash-shop items. So I think this point is really neither here nor there when it comes to most cash shop cosmetics.
"NoBonus": There actually are controls to this, but you don't necessarily see it directly. Part of the problem relates to the fact that some of the adjustments are made by BHS in considering K-TERA, and then EME has to make their own adjustments to reflect our own slightly-different market, but they do exercise controls to moderate supply and demand. Likewise, the possibility of taking advantage of market fluctuations and using it profit is absolutely part of the "game" EME is deliberately playing here. But likewise, there are controls. The intention of "balance" is not necessarily pure stability -- some market volatility is good and perfectly normal. Anticipating how the meta will shift is a big part of playing the market in this game (and many other MMOs as well, incidentally).
The Gold:EMP ratio is almost entirely correlated to the rate at which the average end-game player can be expected to earn gold in an hour, with a small bias to account for general over-supply of dormant gold (due to lacking gold sinks). So even this too has a rhyme and reason to it. A certain degree of inflation is normal in any MMO (since it rewards active players), but when it gets way too rampant, controls are put in place to curb the excess.
Now, please don't take all this to say that I think all of EME's marketing plans/strategies are great, as I do not. But, at least for some of them, and this one in particular, I do think it makes sense on the whole. Of course, there are some ways it could be improved. For example, if they can adjust the TERA Rewards system, it may be possible to use this as an additional lever in the rarity equation, and so on.
Which costumes and weapon skins are you talking about specifically?
I want Fiery Feathers/Winged Laurel/Vesels Delusion/Elin Blackguard Leather.... with these costumes/weapon skins my character would look awesome. )
That's you, you do not represent what most people do. Businesses do these things based on the majority, who gives them more money, and not what a small group of people do.