Lightning Deal of the Day inconsistencies…

Jash735

I don’t mean to complain because I’m really loving some of these lightning deals. I don’t even mind spending the odd few bucks on some of them, and I really love the HP ones. But I’ve noticed some pretty big inconsistencies with some of them.

Today’s, for instance, is 600,000 ISO for $25. But I just bought one a week or so ago that was 250,000 ISO for $7.

It’s almost like they’re trying to figure out how much players are willing to be gouged… 🤔

entrailbucket

When Amazon puts a $200 item on sale, sometimes the sale price is $100, and sometimes it's $175.

Steep discounts create urgency to buy, but only if they're kept rare. If MPQ offered half-off deals every day, that'd just become the new regular price. We'd all wait, then rush to buy when they had 75% off.

bigjojo04

I’m not surprised because as you said, it’s as if they’re testing the player base to see how much they’re willing to spend for not just the lightning deals, but all the offers. What was the cost for the ascended Human Torch yesterday, like 11.99 or something? I just remember seeing the cost and thinking we had never seen something being featured at that price before.

I actually considered this current days lightning deal for a moment seeing how much I am in iso debt at that moment, but didn’t

bluewolf

Worth remembering: there is almost no cost to putting up an offer that no one takes, besides the labor behind assembling graphics, testing to make sure it works correctly, putting it on the schedule. But they do that every day.

Anyway a bad offer is just another opportunity to make a little money and maybe someone buys it, or maybe they just get excited next time a better one appears and spend on that.

But the cost to the devs of no one buying it is marginal.

Jash735

@bigjojo04

I thought the same thing, both about HT (odd price…) and the ISO (I did the math and decided to wait for the 250k deal again!).

entrailbucket

@bluewolf said:
Worth remembering: there is almost no cost to putting up an offer that no one takes, besides the labor behind assembling graphics, testing to make sure it works correctly, putting it on the schedule. But they do that every day.

Anyway a bad offer is just another opportunity to make a little money and maybe someone buys it, or maybe they just get excited next time a better one appears and spend on that.

But the cost to the devs of no one buying it is marginal.

Well, also, none of this stuff has any "cost" to the devs at all! It's not like these are physical goods that have to be manufactured and warehoused and shipped or something. They wouldn't lose money if they sold a million iso for a dollar, just theoretical future revenue that may never happen at all.

They do have to keep the "exchange rate" of dollars to HP/iso somewhat consistent though, or the in-game economy will fall apart.

bluewolf

@entrailbucket said:

@bluewolf said:
Worth remembering: there is almost no cost to putting up an offer that no one takes, besides the labor behind assembling graphics, testing to make sure it works correctly, putting it on the schedule. But they do that every day.

Anyway a bad offer is just another opportunity to make a little money and maybe someone buys it, or maybe they just get excited next time a better one appears and spend on that.

But the cost to the devs of no one buying it is marginal.

Well, also, none of this stuff has any "cost" to the devs at all! It's not like these are physical goods that have to be manufactured and warehoused and shipped or something. They wouldn't lose money if they sold a million iso for a dollar, just theoretical future revenue that may never happen at all.

They do have to keep the "exchange rate" of dollars to HP/iso somewhat consistent though, or the in-game economy will fall apart.

"Somewhat" is doing a lot of work here, in the modern MPQ era. Once upon a time, you mostly saw HP rates hold steady. Bonus offers were pretty rare and hence often tempting.

Today you see bundles all the time, and one can try to parse out the different parts and assign value to them, and the HP that is often included. Or look for the (seemingly) monthly 100% bonus HP offers if you are inclined. Or the 30% bonus HP offer that is currently running. And on and on. But if you skip one and want to spend, there'll be some other one tomorrow or in a week that will be appealing.

No matter what resource you look at, the valuation and costs vary wildly from day to day and offer to offer. Even if the devs have a baseline and build offers from that assumption, it's barely adhered to from my perspective.

Such a different time, today.

entrailbucket

@bluewolf said:

@entrailbucket said:

@bluewolf said:
Worth remembering: there is almost no cost to putting up an offer that no one takes, besides the labor behind assembling graphics, testing to make sure it works correctly, putting it on the schedule. But they do that every day.

Anyway a bad offer is just another opportunity to make a little money and maybe someone buys it, or maybe they just get excited next time a better one appears and spend on that.

But the cost to the devs of no one buying it is marginal.

Well, also, none of this stuff has any "cost" to the devs at all! It's not like these are physical goods that have to be manufactured and warehoused and shipped or something. They wouldn't lose money if they sold a million iso for a dollar, just theoretical future revenue that may never happen at all.

They do have to keep the "exchange rate" of dollars to HP/iso somewhat consistent though, or the in-game economy will fall apart.

"Somewhat" is doing a lot of work here, in the modern MPQ era. Once upon a time, you mostly saw HP rates hold steady. Bonus offers were pretty rare and hence often tempting.

Today you see bundles all the time, and one can try to parse out the different parts and assign value to them, and the HP that is often included. Or look for the (seemingly) monthly 100% bonus HP offers if you are inclined. Or the 30% bonus HP offer that is currently running. And on and on. But if you skip one and want to spend, there'll be some other one tomorrow or in a week that will be appealing.

No matter what resource you look at, the valuation and costs vary wildly from day to day and offer to offer. Even if the devs have a baseline and build offers from that assumption, it's barely adhered to from my perspective.

Such a different time, today.

I guess I'm just not paying attention to it. I buy stuff sometimes if it seems like a good deal, but I had no idea it was that variable now.

Scofie

** Personal view**

There are all sorts of reasons why variability is important in the value of different offers. Off the top of my head, you might have:
Stage of the game - what are the current needs/ wants of the player base? What might different player segments want to buy?
Spending habits - are purchases impulsive or regular, level of spend per transaction.
Alternative offers - are there ways to get the the same running concurrently?
Regularity of offers - if I don't buy it now, will I be able to buy it in a month or two?

All these things play into the venn diagram of "value" which is relative to the individual player and their personal circumstances but these can be assumed by trend analysis of multiple data points and triangulation (but will also shift during that triangulation period).

So examples are the 5* costume bundles. An SC cover and 2.5k HP (of you have the costume) for £6.39 is great value. Similar SC offers ran recently for £19.09 but included a load of other stuff I didn't care about and therefore not worth 3x the price to me. If they ran the £6.39 deal every day, I'd not buy it every time. Perhaps once or twice when I needed the HP. If I were trying to champ SC and needed loads of HP, I might buy it much more regularly.

They could offer a million Iso for £1 and I'd not buy it, because I don't need another million Iso. But it's a fantastic deal.

They could offer every character at 550 for £2000 but I'd not buy it because that's not an amount of money I would choose to spend on the game in one hit (and it would effectively reduce my enjoyment of playing the game after a short time of reveling in the power!). I expect some would definitely buy it. It would be great value for money objectively.

TLDR - value of different resources is subjective and incentives may our may not suit different types of players at different points in the game and therefore is not necessarily linear.

JoeHandle

@Jash735 said:
Today’s, for instance, is 600,000 ISO for $25. But I just bought one a week or so ago that was 250,000 ISO for $7.

Both offers have appearred before, and will presumably appear again ... unless they don't. Some other variation(s) could appear any day now ... isn't it exciting? For instance, a few times we saw 250K iso for $5. That was during anniversary ... also in the early days of lightning iso offers, IIRC. Maybe that was determined to be too cheap. Maybe.

It’s almost like they’re trying to figure out how much players are willing to be gouged… 🤔

All offers are tests and generate data to be collected for analysis. So ... yes, exactly, ofc they are.

Last thought, there is more to consider that a simple iso/$ calculation. Players can "earn" however much iso they iso earn in a day though play. Even if they played all events that flailed away in sim or LRs ALL day, at some point there is an ultimate cap to what they can earn. That determines how quickly they can build / champ / dupe / ascend characters. The ability to buy additional iso has value, accelerating a player's rate of roster building.

These iso offers have been offered sort of regularly. If both of these offers were up every week or ever every day this would be easier to see, but if a player was able to buy 250K iso with some regularity, and another player was able to buy 600K iso with similar regularity, well 600K guy would race ahead roster-wise, champing, etc, much faster, so long as covers were flowing and slots available. There can be greater value in being able to buy more per unit of time.

Ofc, buying iso in these quantities and at relatively low prices too often would just remove iso as a constraint, faster than it already happens in the course of play ... so probably not likely to see these offers, esp the larger qty one, more often than we are.

kuntilanak

I find the monetary deals not appealing at all as i just recently champped all the characters barring the latest. Only the occasional 'purchase' with HP i will indulge (in-game currency for in-game stuff). I'm only semi- competitive, so whatever arsenal i have at my disposal for now (all baby champ 5*, with the highest just shy of 480) are good enough to get by.

NMANOZ1

Need more 3 stars ascended to 4 stars offers.