Otto's Irresistable Box

[Dagolar]

It's pretty well resistible right now :P

The problem lies in the wide variety of items offered in it- from the astral shards, cakes, jewels, and xp potions, which some players would consider junk items, to the pet certificate that, while at least sellable, others may view as the same.

Personally, were the pet certificate and the stone of xp offered on their own, I'd have genuine interest in the set. But at the current obscene price, with the unnecessary included items, it's- well, not living up to its name.

Ideally, there'd be the option to buy just the stone of XP and certificate, but another possible route would be to make the box more customizable, working off the existing [astral shards or pet certificate] option to essentially allow players to add 5 bonuses of their choice [eg, 5 Siberys cakes would count as one choice, 3 greater Siberys cakes as another] in addition to the Stone of XP.
Obviously, additional options would have to be added to the selectable list. :)


...okay, I admit it. I'm just hankerin' for my very own clear blue jello. :(

[HunterjWizzard]

They are pretty irresistable, I bought two and know plenty of people bought a lot more.

The reason for the bundle is to justify the high price and reduce the barriers to entry. Someone did the math, and not counting the pet certificate or the XP stone, all the stuff is worth nearly 5k TP. By bundling it all together at a high price, it excludes the more casual players. Only people who are really into the game are going to drop 5k on a box, and only those people are going to know the game well enough to build a good insta-leveled character.

If they sold the stones by themselves for, say, 1,000 TP, then it'd be a pretty small price for someone new to the game to drop in and throw it on their brand new, first-life character. Suddenly, you've got a bunch of completely inexperienced 16s running around, and we all knew how that went over when the XP stones FIRST popped up...

[Dagolar]

They are pretty irresistable, I bought two and know plenty of people bought a lot more.

The reason for the bundle is to justify the high price and reduce the barriers to entry. Someone did the math, and not counting the pet certificate or the XP stone, all the stuff is worth nearly 5k TP. By bundling it all together at a high price, it excludes the more casual players. Only people who are really into the game are going to drop 5k on a box, and only those people are going to know the game well enough to build a good insta-leveled character.

If they sold the stones by themselves for, say, 1,000 TP, then it'd be a pretty small price for someone new to the game to drop in and throw it on their brand new, first-life character. Suddenly, you've got a bunch of completely inexperienced 16s running around, and we all knew how that went over when the XP stones FIRST popped up...

Were we reducing the price, I'd imagine 2999 TP for just the two, actually.

In any case, the complaint was about the precise nature of the inclusions within the box, alongside things that are rather gamebending on their own [I'm speaking about the clear blue jello, of course].

Hence the note on simply offering more options within a single box, or offering multiple stone of xp boxes with different inclusions.

In the marketing context I was referring to, they're not irresistible, as they needlessly narrow their market range for no marketing-related gains. Obviously they're irresistible if they fit to your particular needs and desires, it'd be ludicrous to use that as the basis, especially since I derived my previous considerations off of that very point ;P


Here, lets make it simple.

tl;dr version:
Offer more stone of xp and cyan cube options in the DDO Store.


Better? ;P

[HunterjWizzard]

See whats funny to me is you're stuck on the pet certificate, to me that is the one part they could drop and I wouldn't care at all.

XP potions, jewels of fortune, and cakes are all good sellers. Cakes are just a smart thing to have on hand anyway, a lot of people buy XP potions, and the jewels? The jewels just make it possible to get at-level weapons and items once you finish using the stone. Really, the box is the perfect mix of everything you need to create a super character in one afternoon.

They could make you happy by just selling the pet certificate seperately. They made me happy by letting me trade the stupid thing for astral shards(which I have gotten a surprising amount of use out of).

And in the marketting context: Yes, the ARE irresistable. Turbine sold A TON of them. I won't even bother linking the dozens of threads aluding to that fact.